


The Artifact

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Multi, Sexual Slavery, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-21 12:25:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 26,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17642771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Spike agrees to some apocalypse-averting prostitution. It doesn't go well for him. Takes place during season 5, post "Crush"





	1. At the Gate of the City of Artificers

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, kids, here's the deal. I wrote this very odd thing and never posted it because I never finished it but I've decided to go ahead and let it out for December, and maybe I'll come up with an ending by the time I've posted all the other chapters.
> 
> Warnings: Noncon, questionable con, all the consent issues, foul language, oh, and character death - of the canon variety. Sorry, Joyce. I wanted her IN the story and I was gonna save her but... yeah.

Spike pressed his lips together and exhaled heavily through his nose. “Couldn’t have zapped us INTO the sodding magic city, could you?”

Giles gritted his teeth, trying to keep a pleasant face for the guards in front of them. “It’s warded, now shut up.”

Buffy looked smaller than ever, standing in front of four large stone monsters with spears. The monsters were blocking the entrance to the city they had to get into to get some amulet that would save the world. Between the center two stone monsters stood a middle-aged woman with a prim and cold look about her. She wore a toga and carried a clipboard.

“Let me get this straight,” Buffy said, “We can’t enter the city of whateveritis…”

“Wallandra,” the woman provided.

“Unless we have something of value to trade? And you already said no to Giles’s watch, my bracelet, and Xander’s very tasty, sugar-free gum. Look, we’re only going to be here for five minutes, tops. How much can that possibly be worth?”

The woman smirked, eyes sliding to Xander. “Well, if you’re only staying a short while, you could leave your young man in the brothel for that time. They’re always looking for fresh faces.”

Xander’s eyebrows shot to his hairline and Spike laughed outright.

“Really not happening,” Buffy said, though she did glance back briefly. “Come on, don’t we have anything you want?”

“We are artificers. No _object_ you bring interests us.”

“I can babysit?” Buffy offered. The guard didn’t look remotely interested. Buffy turned and waved Giles, Xander and Spike together in a huddle. “Okay, confab. What do we do?”

Giles spoke first. “We have to find some skill we have that they value.”

“Brothel’s the obvious option,” Spike said, deadpan.

“Hey!” Xander squeaked. “I’m not doing the horizontal mambo for… for entrance fees. And shut up, Spike. The only reason you even came along is to score brownie points with Buffy. Well, I have news: there aren’t enough brownie points in the world.”

Over Buffy’s muttered, “That’s true,” Spike said, “Wrong as usual. Only reason I came along is I was bored. Joyce got herself a new boyfriend and doesn’t want me hanging around her place lest he confuse me with a sexy younger rival.”

“My mom has a WHAT? Wait – you’re hanging around my house?”

“You’ve got cable,” Spike said.

“Can we get back to the brothel part of the conversation?” Xander asked, looking nervously back at the city gate. “That lady has not stopped staring at me.”

“No one is going to the brothel,” Giles said, firmly.

Spike cracked a wide grin. “It’s a bloody discredit to her eyesight that she picked XANDER over me. I’ll go.”

“Be serious,” Buffy said. “We have to figure this out.”

“I am. Look, tell the bint I volunteer for the brothel. I let some old hag chase me around the bed for fifteen minutes, and then you come collect me. Like picking a lock. A victimless crime.”

Spike looked very pleased with his idea, and Xander said, “Yeah, send Spike to the scary matriarchal brothel. He’s good with that. I’m good with the part I don’t play in the plan.”

Giles rubbed the space between his eyes.

Buffy said, “You’re forgetting something, Spike: something that begins with a C and ends with blinding pain when you try to fight a human?”

“Don’t have to fight anyone. It’s fifteen minutes and I’m faster than them. Besides.” He touched the tip of his tongue to his teeth. “Maybe I’ll just get lucky.”

“Gross! You’re a pig!”

Giles said, “I’m for anything that will get me out of this conversation.”

The guard must have been listening, because she was suddenly in their circle, at Spike’s side, holding her clipboard. “Wonderful. Sign here.”

Spike raised his eyebrows and picked up the pen.

“This is a bad idea,” Buffy said. “Gross, and a bad idea.”

The guard looked at Spike’s signature like it was a shiny new paycheck. She held the clipboard out to marvel for a moment and then turned to Buffy, handing her a small stone tile about the size of a domino. “Present this receipt for the return of your chattel.”

Spike caught Buffy’s eyes and waggled his eyebrows. Then he vanished.

“Hey!” Buffy glared at the guard. “What’s the idea?”

“If you really are only going to be here a short while, expedited use is necessary. You can pick him up at the brothel on your way out. It’s on the city square, across from the temple.” She smiled coolly and gestured them toward the gate, where the huge stone monsters had stepped aside silently.

“We can’t defeat them,” Giles advised as Buffy straightened to her full height. “We’ll do better to get the talisman and get out.”

“We’ll talk later,” Buffy said, jabbing a finger at the guard.

“This will work,” Giles said, under his breath as they passed through the ornately carved stone gates. “The temple is where the talisman is. We’ll be in and back to Spike before he has time to annoy them into staking him.” Giles paused, looked back, and said, “I can’t believe I care.”

However, when they found the talisman, the moment Buffy touched it, she, Xander and Giles found themselves back in the Magic Box. Willow was still waving the incense bundle from the spell to send them into the other dimension. She dropped it with a shocked gasp. “Wow. That was… you guys didn’t even vanish. I mean, you did, but… where’s Spike?”

Everyone looked around themselves. “Perhaps,” Giles said, “He was transported relative to us. He could be across the street.”

Buffy planted her fists on her hips. “Or we just left him. In a brothel.”

Willow’s eyebrows shot up. “What kind of dimension was this?”

“The ancient city of artifact crafters,” Giles sighed. “Buffy. You have to take the talisman to the site of the rift and stop it before it opens. We’ll look for Spike.”

“It’s only Spike,” Xander offered. “He can take care of himself.”

“It was almost only YOU,” Buffy pointed out, but nodded. “Let’s get this world saved. Again.”

***

Spike blinked, surprised that his surroundings had changed completely, but he didn’t let it phase him. He was in a dark room, round with high windows far above. A set of stairs went up to a ledge at about waist-height and off this ledge there were three curtained archways. In front of one of these stood an older woman in a grey toga. He gave her his best leer. “Well, ducks, you’re about to get your money’s worth. Hold on to your eyeballs.” He rolled his shoulders and gave his enviably flat stomach a rub. “Because I bet I can make taking my shirt off last the full fifteen minutes and you won’t even regret it.”

The woman glanced up and down him, a hint of smile touching her stony features. “Tell Wrella we have another one for the meat room.”

“Another for the what now?” Spike straightened as the woman parted a curtain and walked out of the room. That was when four other hands grabbed Spike’s arms from behind.


	2. A Delayed Claim

With one thing after another, Buffy woke up the next day, still smelling like burning rift despite her shower, with a horrified gasp and the sudden realization that they’d forgotten Spike. She fell back against her pillow. “Why can’t I wake up realizing the oven is still on?”

She could just go back to sleep. Hey look, no more Spike to deal with, ever again. It wasn’t like he wasn’t evil. Buffy rolled over. And back again. Sometimes being moral sucked.

Giles didn’t pick up his phone and so she had to go to his place. It took four times knocking for him to answer the door, looking about as disheveled and tired as Buffy felt. “Spike,” she said.

Giles grimaced and pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “I suppose we ought to rescue him.”

“I know,” Buffy said. “It feels like… do we gotta? But he did volunteer to help us. He didn’t have to.”

“To be in the debt of William the Bloody. Perish the thought.” Giles sighed. “I’ll call Willow and we’ll arrange the dimensional travel spell again.”

They’d used up all the galingale herb the first time, and what with waiting for the shop to close before they discovered that, it was the next day before they had everything ready and Willow and Giles were laying out herbs and drawing in chalk on the floor of the shop. “One thing I should warn you about,” Giles said, “When we went in the first time, it took us hours to reach the city, and here, no time passed at all.”

“Right. So you’re going to try to get us closer this time? Because my boots never recovered.”

Willow looked up from crumbling some savory leaves. “It means that we don’t know how long Spike has been in there. Days or even years could have passed.”

“Great. So he might not even be in the city anymore.” Buffy rolled her lips inward. She fished the stone ticket out of her pocket. It was engraved with swirls and dots similar to the talisman they had gone to fetch. “What if we can’t find him?”

“I’ll leave it to your discretion how much time you want to spend in another dimension. Though again, we have no way of knowing how much time passes here while we’re away.”

“Nothing to it but to do it.” Buffy shrugged and stepped into the circle.

They materialized in front of the giant stone monsters. Giles sighed with relief the same time Buffy did. “Yes, much better,” he said.

“Always easier the second time, huh?”

“Let’s not see how it is the third,” he said, and grimly stepped forward, waving to the woman with the clipboard. This one had tightly curled hair.

Buffy’s stone chip was enough to get them into the city since they had ‘legitimate business’.

The brothel receiving room was a sunken square lined with low benches covered in silk pillows. The place looked like a temple on the outside and like a fancy spa on the inside. They were lead to seats by a handsome man in a barely-there toga, and another appeared with a tall ewer of some amber liquid and teeny gold cups.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate all the ceremony,” Buffy said, setting the cup down as soon as it was handed to her, “but I really just want Spike back so we can go. He’s here, isn’t he?”

The man smiled, bowed, and in a soft voice said, “The mistress will be with you shortly.”

Buffy looked to Giles, who sniffed his own drink before taking a tentative sip. “If they didn’t have him, we would have been sent away.” Giles frowned. “I think.”

A curtain drew back and a woman came in, older but still handsome, dressed in a modest toga. “Welcome,” she said. “I understand you have the claim ticket?”

Buffy stood and handed over the stone. “We’d just like to take Spike and go, if that’s alright.”

The woman studied the stone, her lips compressing. She sighed, and then sat down on the cushions opposite them. “He’s with a client right now. Would you care to sample our offerings? Purely my gift to you as trade partners. If you like, you may stay the night in our guest suite and we’ll discuss business in the morning.”

“World of no,” Buffy said.

“We’d rather just complete our transaction,” Giles translated.

There was an awkward pause, during which the madam obviously hoped her earnest smile would change their minds. She broke eye contact. “I’m aware that your claim is valid, and that we’ve had far more use of him than the initial contract of fifteen minutes. However, when you didn’t return to claim him within the first year, we assumed the contract was abandoned. We’ve put a lot of work into this vampire, with the understanding that we would keep him for the foreseeable future.” She turned the stone ticket over in her hands. “Perhaps there is some small token we can offer you in exchange for this really rather worthless little claim? We have other gentlemen just as pretty.”

Buffy was still reeling over the words ‘first year’ when Giles quietly and firmly said, “Spike is not for sale. We traveled here from another world and so what seems years to you was only a matter of days for us, and from our point of view the bargain has not changed. Your time is up. Please return him immediately.”

Buffy was silently grateful for how Giles could do that uber-polite-but-all-threaty-underneath thing.

The woman spent way too long looking up and down Giles like he was tweed candy. “If you let days pass you can’t have been that eager to have him back.”

“We were unintentionally delayed.”

Giles and the madam stared each other down for a while. Finally she stood. To a servant hanging obsequiously at the fringe of the room, she said, “Have him brought.” Turning back to them, she said, “I hope once you see all the work that we’ve put into him, you’ll agree that this is no longer your vampire at all. You may not even want him anymore. He’s certainly assumed you didn’t want him back after all this time.”

Low blow, Buffy thought. She crossed her arms. “We don’t barter over people.”

“You’re here because you have,” the madam said. Ouch. Lower blow.

The curtains opened and another pretty, scantily-clad young man stepped into the room. His eyes found hers immediately, and then dropped. Buffy gasped. There had been a moment of recognition, of some emotion, but now all she saw were his lashes against his cheeks, a demure mask. If she hadn’t seen his eyes, that one glance, she wouldn’t have recognized him. It’s not that his face is different; it was just such a un-Spike-like expression.

Spike stepped gracefully down into the conversation space, and at a signal from the madam knelt at her feet.

He was exquisitely polished. His hair was long and loose and a better ‘sunburst gold’ than her own. He wore a skimpy concoction of silver silk gauze that more adorned his nakedness than clothed him. It was only opaque enough at his crotch to make you wonder how much of what you saw was seeing straight through and how much was a fold in the fabric.

Buffy tore her eyes away and anxiously checked to see if Giles caught her staring. Giles was staring, mouth fully ajar. Well, yeah. Good. It wasn’t just her. Gems caught the light in Spike’s ears, his neck, his arms and wrists: delicate little chains with thick gems dangling off them at artistic intervals. Studs embedded in the skin. He had a belly button ring! All Buffy could think was how very much Spike would never dress like that. He was so… pretty! And not fussing or growling about it. Buffy couldn’t tear her eyes from him. Was that blue eye shadow? Purple eyeliner?

“The jewelry, of course, is our property.” The madam placed a fingertip under Spike’s chin and raised his face. Spike kept his gaze on the floor. “See here the texture of the skin. It took months to devise a system that worked with the vampire’s healing properties instead of against them, and additional months to scrub away every blemish. He had scars, here.” Her finger traced the length of his throat. “And here,” she touched his eyebrow. “And don’t get me started on the hair color. He came to us with unusual coloring that soon turned out to be nothing more than an applied dye on very ordinary hair. We had to enchant the hair or it would have required repeated dying.”

“And you made no profit whatsoever on your expenses,” Giles said. “Please, tell me how much this beautification project cost you, and I’ll settle the difference.” He opened his satchel.

The madam dropped one shoulder. Buffy began to fear that she was about to flirt with Giles. “Perhaps you’ll just have to raise this matter with the magister.”

“Yes, take you to court, while you continue to enjoy use of our… our property,” Giles said. “You have one last chance to end this amicably, or I’ll simply have Buffy take Spike’s hand and incant the spell to return us home.”

The madam stood. “What?”

“Buffy,” Giles said, “Take Spike’s hand.”


	3. Blocked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I get the feeling that some people got the mistaken impression that the last chapter didn't end on a cliffhanger. My bad.

“Buffy,” Giles said, “Take Spike’s hand.”

Buffy knocked drinks and decanter off the little table as she grabbed for Spike, feeling Giles’ grip on her arm at the same time.

The madam said something, touched a stone on her necklace, and Buffy ran right into an invisible surface blocking Spike. It felt like glass. She hit it, painfully, but there was no sound.

Spike looked at her with raw desperation, inches away and untouchable.

“Well,” said the madam, “I had hoped to be civil about this. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you both to leave. I reject your claim. Take it up with the courts.” She tossed the stone tablet onto the table.

Buffy and Giles found themselves ushered into the square by the deceptively muscular and strong pretty boys of the brothel.

After a long, awkward moment of staring at the door they’d just been pushed out of, Giles cleared his throat. “Yes, I should have seen that coming. Master artificers would have some protection against magic.”

“Ya think?” Buffy turned in place. “What do we do? Where’s this magister person? Do we even, have, like, rights?”

Giles was still straightening his disheveled jacket. “As much as it pains me to lose to that woman, we might have to give up on getting him back. At least he can do no harm here.” Giles frowned. “I don’t think.”

“Giles, you didn’t see the look he gave me.”

“What sort of look?”

“Like he’d chop off his arms to get out of there, and not care how sharp the knife was.” Buffy turned and marched across the square. There was the brothel, the temple – one of the other two big, impressive buildings had to be City Hall. She headed toward the biggest. “Come on, let’s get magistering.”

***

Ten bloody YEARS. He’d given up hope, and then there they were – just as he’d last seen them, though with a hint of some dark, burnt smell that he presumed was successful apocalypse aversion.

Ten bloody years.

Spike stared at the space where Buffy had been. He felt the barrier, the familiar curl of magic around his wrists and knew the slightest struggle would be painfully countered.

He’d cried out. He’d made eye contact without permission. He’d dare look unhappy in the receiving room.

Oh, bugger. He struggled anyway.

Mistress Wrella glared at him. He lowered his gaze, but not fast enough.

Her shadow fell on him. “Was that proper behavior?” she asked.

I don’t know, he wanted to say, is chaining me up and making me your fuck-puppet proper behavior, your holiness? “No, Mistress. I’m sorry. It was… my emotions got the better of me.”

The slap didn’t sting; it was the humiliation of taking it that burned.

Ten years, and seeing Buffy erased every second. He had to clench his arms to keep them still.

“It’s a pity I don’t dare take you off duty for punishment. It’s only a matter of weeks before the magister takes you away. That claim is valid. Damn it. Julla!”

Spike flinched despite himself at the anger in her voice, and hated himself for the flinch. A rustle of silks and jewels announced the arrival of the booking mistress. “Yes, Mistress Wrella?”

“I want this vampire ridden into the ground. No rest time. Rent him dirty if you have to. We need to earn as much as possible from his flesh this week.”

Oh thanks for the no punishment, Spike thought.

Wrella grasped his chin and turned him to face her. Her lips tightened at his expression. He was trying for blank, but obviously not succeeding.

You look ugly, Mistress, with your lips twisted like that.

“What a pity,” she said, “I won’t be able to have my regular enjoyment of you. But make no mistake – we prepared for this day from the very beginning. You WILL return to us.”

Spike’s smile fell just as his mistress’ grew. She kissed his unresisting lips. “And when you come back, you will come back begging to stay.”


	4. The Meat Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Spike pretty much has a rough time of it, start to finish.

Spike didn’t want to feel insulted, being sent to the street lounge. It was where the worn-out, the less attractive, the new whores went. Lower quality, lower prices, no appointment necessary.

It wasn’t like he CARED how good a whore he was.

But he was pretty fucking great. Not that anyone was asking.

The “Street Lounge” was so called because it opened onto Market Street at the rear of the building with a low balustrade and benches in the sun for those who did not care for some privacy in their trysts. Anyone could come in off the street with no appointment and order a drink or a boy from the bar with the same informality. They didn’t even card.

The barman raised his eyebrows a fraction as Spike stomped down the employee’s stairs, but didn’t say anything, just handed him a necklace with a brass number. The number was how the customers requested someone and how the barmen kept track that you were being a good little whore and turning a profit.

This wasn’t humiliating at all. The brass felt cold even against his room-temperature chest. They must have kept those things in a bucket of ice. He sauntered into the bar area and scanned the early clients. If he were lucky, there’d be a less-awful-than-usual bloke he could snatch by virtue of being the best damn thing on the docket. Looked like, though, his choices were a limp fish and a nervous twat so far. Par for the fucking course.

Spike was making eyes at the nervous twat and moving in his general direction when the limp fish glanced at Spike and raised a lazy finger. And so it begins. Spike had to smile. Had to approach like he was delighted with the attention. Draped himself on a fat knee and asked the limp fish if he wanted to go somewhere more private. He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. That cost extra. And then he just sat there. That was the thing with ‘limp fish’ in general. Not so much as a suggestion to get things going. They expected you to guess what they wanted. Spike couldn’t imagine how the blokes without vampire senses did it.

Spike let his hand roam, then his lips, and as he slid down to his knees on the stone patio, he was suddenly very aware of the open street beside him. A street that could have Buffy walking down it.

He froze just a second, but the punishment was instant. Not that the limp fish noticed. Spike held his breath through the pain and got to work.

***

When Spike materialized in the brothel’s new arrivals room, he’d been grabbed, suddenly, violently, by two strong blokes who had wrestled his clothes off of him without so much as a by-your-leave. They had a short, curved knife each and cut casually at his clothes, slicing his belt and jeans like the peel of a fruit and shucking pieces aside.

Their heartbeats didn’t even rise. This was boring to them. Spike clocked one with his elbow and paid for it by being in too much pain to stop them from cutting through the laces on his Doc Martens. Bastards. Spike was fully glad he hadn’t worn his duster that day. The black button-down, he could part with. But how did they expect him to leave this place?

He chuckled, imagining the expressions on Buffy, Giles and Xander as he walked up to them completely starkers. Giles would polish a hole in his glasses. Buffy would pretend not to look and get that fetching blush.

That was all the time he had for pleasant thoughts before he was being tied up. He broke through leather restraints and that earned him a clock on the head that sent him reeling.

Buggering thing about concussions was how vampires could still get them. He blinked and staggered drunkenly between the two big meaty blokes who led him to what was, he was to learn, ‘the meat room’. Here he was efficiently chained up, oiled down, and left for a still moment, to feel the cooling traces of hands and wonder what exactly was going to happen next. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t see it. He was facing a plain brick wall.

His dazzled mind had just enough time to gather up the thought to wonder why they called it “The Meat Room”.

A door opened and closed – the only solid door he’d seen in this place full of curtains and archways. Spike smelled nervous sweat and thickly applied perfume. He tried to see behind him. His arms strained against the chains and he caught a glimpse of two togas and the glint of metal pieces and torchlight.

“Does he meet with your approval, Madame?”

“Very much so! Why, you so rarely have pretty ones here. Did he disobey?”

“You are welcome to use any implements on the shelf, Madame, but please put any used implements in the bin on the opposite side of the room so we may maintain our excellent cleanliness standards.”

“Oi! What does that mean? Hey!”

Her hands were wet and cold on his back. She slapped his ass, then turned him in place and kissed him.

Spike was surprised how affronted he felt – he was no shrinking virgin, ta ever so, but there was a definite coldness inside him at the thought that he had no choice in the matter. Still, he tried for a leer. “Hello, luv. How about letting these chains go? I’m much more fun with the use of my hands.”

The woman – older but not bad, sort of a silver fox, truth be told, with dark eyebrows and a sharp jawline – stepped back. “You have no idea what this room is for?”

Spike started to answer, but the woman’s delighted grin, as hard and shark-like as Angelus on a very bad day, silenced him.

She trailed her fingertips on his belly as she walked to the rack of implements. She bumped her hand along whip handles and knives before picking up a flogger. “Let’s get some color in your skin to start,” she said. Then she showed him what that room was for.

The first slap didn’t even hurt. He laughed. “Don’t tickle me, Love.”

“Oh… a masochist, then?” She drew the flogger lightly up his spine. “How disappointing.”

That did tickle, and he squirmed helplessly. She cut a good hit on one arsecheek and cupped his cock. Despite everything, he was hard, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. “Well, not that disappointing.” She gave him a fond squeeze and traded out the flogger for a bullwhip.

The first crack was like ice, more shock than pain. The whip whispered across the floor as she drew back and the line of ice melted into an itch and burn. The second strike was fire.

She was doing a good job keeping the rhythm off, keeping him from guessing when the strike was going to land. He hissed through his teeth and laughed. “Is this supposed to be torture? Or are you just boring me to death?”

“You bleed so prettily,” she said, hitting him in the soft flesh just above his right hip.

It was starting to wear thin. At least he knew this would all be over in, what, fifteen minutes? Definitely not what he pictured from a stint in a brothel. He looked down at his traitorous dick, pointing jauntily north as he swayed in his bounds. Maybe they did something in the air, or there was a spell on the place… magical Viagra. Naughty old wizards.

She walked around him, working over his flesh evenly. It felt like he was cut to ribbons, but he knew from experience whip-strikes felt worse than they looked. She sighed and dropped the whip.

There was a sound of gears and he lowered just a few inches. He could rest on the balls of his feet now. His arms sang with the shift of pressure. Christ but his shoulders ached.

The woman passed a very pretty-looking dagger under his chin. “Not feeling talkative anymore, pretty?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Just wondering if I’ll be out of here before my show’s on.”

She stabbed him. Oh right in the heart. What cheek. He gasped against the pain.

It was worse when she pulled a leaver and he was dumped on the floor, gritty stone on fresh wounds, the knife twisting as he tried to get his elbows under him.

She flipped him onto his back with one foot. Then she slid her toes along the center of him, nudging at his cock, which stood at attention like a dumb little soldier. It felt odd… numb. He watched with half fascination as the woman hiked up her skirts and straddled him.

You could take a lot more humiliation than pain, it seemed. It soaked into him like blood. Like gasoline.

He bucked up just to get the woman off him faster. She got off. Then she left him lying there. Spike rolled onto his elbows and crawled toward where the chains attached to the floor. He was tugging and working at it when the heavy door opened again. The woman in the grey toga from the stripping room entered. Spike licked cracked lips. “That was more than fifteen bloody minutes,” he said.

She left. She hadn’t put all the toys away, either.

Some time later, the big blokes were back – though maybe not the same ones. Spike wasn’t sure. “If it isn’t the eunuch twins. How they hanging? Sorry – too soon?”

The men didn’t respond. They didn’t even look Spike in the eyes as they drew his chains tight again. One wiped his front down with a cloth. It felt humiliating – yet again – and his cock was still hard, bouncing playfully after each hard, sure wipe.

They fed him blood from a wineskin, one holding his shoulders to keep him still. So they knew what a vampire was. Heartbeats steady, they took turns holding and washing him. His injuries were then dabbed with salve. A winch dragged his wrists back up into the air. His shoulder blades sang with agony.

“Real conversationalists you lot are,” Spike said.

He was left to dry. How long had it been? Surely Giles and Buffy had found the bloody amulet by now. Unless they went to avert the apocalypse without him? How long would that take? An hour?

He was beginning to worry.

The woman in the grey toga came back. Again he was inspected and fondled. “This is nice,” she stroked his cock, which, traitorous organ, nudged her palm like an eager puppy. “But ugh. So much body hair.” Her fingertips trailed over his armpit. Spike twitched, ticklish. “If his owner doesn’t claim him tonight, we’ll go ahead and shave him.”

“How about NOT? Like my body just how it is.”

She ignored him. He was starting to expect that. She poked each of the still-healing injuries, made a small hum, and slapped his flank. “He’s good enough to go. Send him out.”

“Out? Out… whoa!”

That had been it for orientation. He was tossed into the street lounge wearing nothing but a number around his neck.

Not that nudity bothered him. Spike was more than happy to parade about and give people a thrill. He smelled alcohol and desperation, saw a night sky and the high counter with a man behind it pouring drinks and he knew where he was. He smirked and stretched and imagined he’d have an easy time of it dodging hands until Buffy got back. The real debt had already been paid back in the torture chamber. Now he was a professional, naked barfly. He only frowned a little when he noticed most of the people in the bar were men.

A calloused hand gripped his thigh from behind. “You’re a pretty one!”

Spike stepped out of the grip and found himself face-to-chest with a real live action He-man figure. He stepped back and the hand was back on his thigh. He looked down. It was another bloke, seated at a low table and practically drooling.

“Playing hard to get?” the big fucker asked.

“Not into blokes,” Spike said. “I go more for the distaff side, yeah?”

The big guy pushed him hard up against the guy behind him, cupped his cheek and purred in a lust-dark voice, “I love when whores play hard to get.”

Spike had dropped low, rolled, kicked someone, the chip had fired, and he found himself on his hands and knees trying to run out from under the big bloke, only to find more hands joining in, and a shouting, party atmosphere breaking out around him as he was wrestled down over a stone balustrade. His thighs were kicked apart, held, and a blunt finger poked into his ass. It burned and chilled.

At the time, it had been horrifying, being that helpless. Not knowing how many of them there were, not knowing how long it would last.

In hindsight, it was one of the easier times he would have in the street lounge.


	5. Let’s Get Magistering

Giles stormed out of the magistrate’s office. “Sexist, condescending…” He turned and glared back at the doorway he’d just come out of. “I am not ‘well aged’. What am I? Wine? Cheese?”

Buffy tried really really hard not to laugh. “She was flirting with you.”

“It’s a place of business.”

“I guess I should do the talking.”

“I am not some… some sidekick to wait in the wings! Buffy, you don’t understand the nuance of their written law. I’ve studied this.”

“Which doesn’t matter if they won’t listen to you.” Buffy took his arm. “Come on. Just… whisper to me what to say. Like that sewer-nose guy.”

“Cyrano de Bergerac.”

“Yeah, him. We’ll get through this.”

Giles sighed, wiped and adjusted his glasses. “Spike is going to owe me for this,” he said, but nodded. “Once more into the breach.”

***

When the Street Lounge clientele finally let him up for air, an obsequious servant motioned Spike to the exit. “Room seven,” the servant said.

“I’m a mess. Give a bloke a break.”

“No time,” the servant said, and pointed to a curtained alcove with a shrug.

Spike groaned. They expected him to do the quick wipe. This was going to leave him in no state fit to anything within a few days. Which was, as the Mistress had so elegantly stated, the point. Standard operating procedure: if you’re going to lose someone, ride ‘em into the ground. Nothing left for a possible competitor to use or sell.

Hard luck for them he was a vampire. He’d be fine as you please after a rest and some blood and enjoy every second of his excellent arse not being Wrella’s. He almost missed the opportunity to hate-fuck her one last time before he left, just to see her trying to save up every minute in the old wank-bank.

Spike limped into the alcove and took down the bottle of cleaning fluid. He hissed as it dripped on an abrasion on his forearm – damn stone couches. He’d gotten sloppy holding on for a spot of gang-bang, which always seemed to happen in the Street Lounge around mid-day. There were discounts for sharing, and lunch-break johns were always in a hurry. It had its advantages though: aside from an occasional arse-wiggle and shouting encouragement when his mouth was otherwise unoccupied, he didn’t have to do any acting.

Julla peered under the alcove curtain. “There’s been a cancellation,” she said. She frowned. “And you’re to be with Lady Salveri in half an hour. I’ll move Emerald to suite seven. Why don’t you stop now and wash?”

“Lovely,” Spike said, and gladly put the bottle down.

“Don’t tell Wrella,” Julla said. Like he would.

He limped as fast as he could to the bathing room. He dropped his clothes as he went straight to the water. Hot and mineral-infused. It smelled and felt heavenly. He sighed as he sank into it and laid back, closing his eyes.

A soft splash heralded another body entering the tub. Spike groaned. He recognized the scent.

A large hand rested on his arm. “Is the rumor true? You are leaving us, brother?”

“Not your brother, pouf. Piss off.”

“Why must one so beautiful be so cruel? I may never see you again.”

Spike shoved the man back as he tried to climb into his lap. “I have barely any time to myself before my next job, G, and I want to spend it soaking. Alone.”

Ganymede put his hand on Spike’s thigh. “Will you really leave without ever having kissed me of your own free will?”

“Looks like.”

“You ARE cruel. I had hoped over time to win you over.” His hand crept up Spike’s thigh. Spike stopped it and moved it back to its owner’s lap. Gany sighed. “No one EVER leaves here. I can’t believe my luck. There’s never been anyone else half as intriguing to me as you have been.”

Spike decided to just lie still and hope Ganymede lost interest. He couldn’t hurt the pouf, and he wanted nothing more than a few moments of letting the warmth of the bath sink into his flesh while his mind did nothing at all.

He was getting good at that. He hardly felt the hands, the mouth on his neck. His mind was busy, though, not shutting down like he wanted. He slit one eye open. “How long’ve you been here, G?”

“Twice as long as you have, and the first decade was excruciatingly dull.”

Spike opened both eyes. “Guess they don’t need vampires to keep their whores young.”

Gany lowered his lashes. “You flatter me.”

“You said you’ve never seen anyone leave in all that time? Why is that?”

“Well, where would we go? We haven’t got a private owner claiming us like you have. The old leave. No one cares where they go. Except the almost-old.” His smile got a strained look to it and Spike almost felt sorry for the rapacious bugger.

So he didn’t move away as G nibbled his earlobe. Instead he said, “The mistress said something to me – real evil-villain-soliloquy bollocks about how I’ll come back whether I like it or not. You know anything about that?”

G stroked Spike’s chest. “Would you reward me if I did?”

Spike groaned. “You don’t know bollocks.” He pushed away and climbed out of the bath, feeling heavy and weary.

Gany followed. Of course he did. Spike suspected the harlot-masters did something to up the sex drive of their human whores. Spike batted his hands away as he dried himself. “Leave off. I’ve got a date with a regular.”

G rested his hands on Spike’s hips in a way he no doubt thought was playful. “Man or woman?”

“Woman. But that still means get off.”

“Perhaps she’ll want to watch two men together.”

“What are the odds?” Spike rolled his eyes. He picked up his discarded clothes to carry back to his room. “For a matriarchy there sure is a steady diet of cock around here.”

He shouldn’t have brought up cocks, of course, because Ganymede grabbed Spike’s wedding tackle and stopped him short, pulling him back against his own naked body. “Hardly. I haven’t had so much as a lick in ages.”

Spike closed his eyes and held still, repeating ‘can’t fight, can’t fight’ and how he hated that that was his mantra. “Customer waiting,” he said. G reluctantly let him go.

***

Buffy and Giles sat together in the early-morning light outside their hotel in the city of the ancient artificers. The façade of the brothel was just in sight in the distance.

“I can’t take another day of court hearings,” Buffy said. “Can’t we just… grab him?”

“We would need to all be together, and it would need to not be within the brothel, or presumably within sight of its magic-wielding mistress. I highly doubt they’ll lend him to us.” Giles sighed. “One more day. They will surely hear the case tomorrow. That’s what the bailiff said.”

Buffy wondered what Spike was up to at that precise moment, and then immediately wished she hadn’t wondered. “I’m going to see if I can get this sped up some,” she said. “Maybe they WILL lend him to us? If we ask the right way.”

“Buffy? I hope you aren’t suggesting what I think you are suggesting.”

“Like… eeew!” She stood and stretched. “I’m talking talk. Like… geishas made tea right? I’m not going to… way with the no. And we have to wait until court-time anyway. I’ll just… ask around. See what the protocol is.”

“All right.” Giles sighed. “I’ll meet you here before lunch?”


	6. Borrowed Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear... Oh... I can't believe I'm going to type this, but...
> 
> Warning: Spuffy Shmoop
> 
> Sorry sorry. I don't know what got into me.

The reception at the brothel was a lot frostier than the first time. Instead of being ushered into a luxurious waiting area and handed a drink, Buffy was made to stand in the vestibule while a pretty boy with a spear watched her like she might make off with the guest book.

Finally, the lady in the fancy toga had to admit that there was no reason not to grant Buffy a visit with her ‘disputed property’ and she was led deep into the temple-like building to a narrow, plain corridor lined with curtained doorways.

The guide-boy pulled a curtain back, revealing a narrow room. There was a bed built into the wall, a series of drawers on the other wall, and a knife-narrow window opposite the door. It was almost like a monk’s cell.

“He will join you when he is free,” the guide-boy said. “If you make any use of him-“

“I told you all a thousand times: I’m just here to talk.”

“-standard fees will be applied,” he said, half-apologetically, and bowed, and left her.

Buffy stared at the neatly-made bed, the bare walls. It didn’t feel like the sort of space Spike would live in. She opened one of the drawers. An array of jewels and chains lay pillowed on shimmering, iridescent cloth. There was also a hairbrush and a cut crystal bottle. She took the lid off and sniffed, but there was no scent to the contents. She dabbed some of the liquid out. It felt slippery.

“Oh. Oh. Eew.” Buffy hurriedly stoppered the bottle and put it back.

She sat on the bed. The window was way too high and too narrow to get Spike through. Which was probably the point. She wondered if Spike ever saw ‘customers’ in this room. Then she jumped off the bed.

She could juuust reach the bottom of the window if she stood on tippy-toe. She pulled herself up. There wasn’t much to see – just sky and another wall. She dropped back to the floor.

“I tried escaping out the window first thing.”

Buffy spun in place to see Spike standing at the door. He was dressed as he had been before, only his eyeliner was smeared and he was holding the edge of his gauzy toga against his chest. He stepped into the room and let the curtain fall behind him, then he let go. The fabric was torn and fell to hang from his waist. He looked down at it. There was an angry red mark on his bicep and shoulder.

“You’re hurt.”

He smiled like it was a compliment. He lifted the torn flap of his tunic like he was considering tying it together, then let it fall again. “So is this a social call?” he took a step closer, chin lowered, voice lowered, “or were you hoping for a test drive?”

Buffy blinked, twice, and hurriedly put up a hand to stop his advance. “Woah. No riding. Or driving. Or… Spike? Can we talk?”

His smile vanished like switching off a light. He half-shrugged, and then dropped, loose-limbed and legs wide on the bed. “We can talk. Someone could be listening. Or not. Or they’ll make me tell them anything you say. I will, too. They have ways.” His head dropped back. His throat was stretched and bare, vulnerable. “Christ, I’m knackered.” He rolled onto his side. “They’ve had me going since your visit. Afraid they won’t get every last cent they can out of me before you get me out of here.”

“It’s taking longer than we thought it would. I’m sorry, Spike.”

His gaze had a scary, hollow quality to it. “You can take anything if it’s got an end to it.”

Buffy sat next to him and reached for his shoulder, hoping to pull him closer so they could talk quietly and avoid being overheard. To her surprise, he turned and kissed her. She’d smacked him before she knew what she was doing.

He stared at her. “Oh,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Reflex.” He sat up a little straighter.

Buffy tightened her hold on his shoulder, lest he get any ideas, and leaned close again. “If we can get you alone somewhere, with me and Giles, we can zap you out of here.”

Spike brushed her hair back from her cheek, and she stiffened, wondering if this was going to turn into a sex thing, but when he leaned close, his lips stopped just shy of her ear. “There’s a house call, tomorrow. Zled Fallas. Supper party.” He pulled back, his eyes searching hers. “You know you can ask me for anything right now. It’s your dime.”

Buffy scooted away. “Forced prostitution is really not my thing.”

“Oh, love, you know better. Not really different, between us. You could always have asked for anything.”

Buffy found suddenly that there was not enough fidgeting she could do at once. She stood up. “I should go.”

“Stay, pet. Please.”

“This was a stupid idea.”

He stopped her at the door with a hand on her arm. “The minute you leave, they’ll send me back to work, and I’m so tired, love. Please?”

Buffy’s heart broke. She threw her arms around him. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled into his bare shoulder.

She felt his tentative pat. “There, there, love. It’s all right. Came as soon as you could, yeah?”

Say yes, Buffy, she thought. She shook her head. She felt Spike stiffen. “It… we had the apocalypse to deal with and then they were all out of some herb and everyone was all ‘oh it’s Spike he won’t mind.’”

She had to see his face. She was afraid to see his face. He wasn’t reacting, wasn’t returning her hug. She stepped back.

He looked like a statue version of Spike. “Not your fault, then,” he said. “No hard feelings.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No, I don’t. But I’m an evil, soulless thing, aren’t I?”

“Spike! It’s not… it wasn’t that.”

Spike turned to the set of drawers and opened the middle one. He reached behind his neck, untying a barely-visible cord.

Buffy turned a moment after what was left of the gossamer toga fell to the ground. Spike made a soft snort.

Could vampires smell blushing? “So, uh… we’re staying in a hotel. It’s very nice. Except I’m not used to stone toilets. I mean… the rushing water underneath it’s like… trying to poop on a waterfall. I can’t believe this is the conversation topic I chose to be less embarrassing.”

“You can turn around now,” Spike said.

He’d replaced the torn toga with a silvery one of identical design. “It’s not like that covers you,” Buffy said.

Spike smirked and adjusted the folds. “It’s practically a nun’s habit compared to some of what they have me parading around in. There’s this get up that’s just chains and jewels. Always gets caught on things. Chairs. Earrings. Cocks.”

Buffy cleared her throat. “Giles brought all this stuff to trade – did you know he had gold bullion?” Spike raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, probably shouldn’t tell you that, huh? But it was the chocolate he was able to sell.”

Spike made a face. “Not that American shite?”

“I guess Mr. Good Bar is Mr. Good Enough if you don’t have cocoa trees on your planet.”

“No accounting for taste.”

Buffy shook her head. It was so strange – Spike was just… being Spike, smirking at her and joking, but if she looked anywhere other than at his face… it wasn’t Spike. Neck-down he was too polished, too decorated, too… words like ‘sculpted’ and ‘taut’ kept coming to mind. She found herself inspecting the woven blanket on the bed. “You don’t see customers in here, do you?”

“Sometimes. Costs less than the guest rooms, more than the street lounge.”

Buffy lifted her hand from the fabric. Spike was watching her, looking calm. Unreadable. That was a new look for him. Buffy cleared her throat. “I can’t do this. I can’t… chat about the freaky, creepy sex slave life.”

“Sorry, love.” He tilted his head. That was pure Spike. The head-tilt, the brief bite of the lower lip. The eyeliner really brought out his eye color. “We can talk about whatever you like.”

He reached for her hands, she flinched back. “No, we really can’t. You and me… we aren’t chat buddies. And I don’t even know how long you’ve BEEN here.”

“Not long enough to break me.”

“You really believe that?”

Spike snorted. “Yeah. Ten years is nothing. I could do that on my head.”

He didn’t see himself – didn’t see how different he was. Buffy said, “I don’t know if we can have this conversation.”

He got this sad half-smile and said, “So leave. I’ll be all right.”

“I can’t leave, either.”

“That’s my hero,” he said, and his expression was, at last, one she remembered.

He tucked her hair behind her ear. “So… cards?”


	7. The Dinner Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's just see how Buffy's plan works out, shall we?

It was odd, having the slayer play gin rummy with him using his homemade set of cards. He both hoped and feared she’d notice her resemblance to the queen of spades. Probably not. He couldn’t draw worth shite.

“Is this a dog?” she asked.

“Uh, s’posed to be the ace of clubs.” Yeah. The illustration world was safe from his competition.

“And that means that this makes gin.” She fanned her cards out smugly. Buffy was just… chatting with him. She still said “ew” or called him a pig whenever he made a joke, but the heat was missing from it. She even cracked a few jokes herself.

“Time’s up.” One of the house boys held the curtain open. When Buffy didn’t hop to, he said, “No additional time is available for purchase. Julla is on her way.”

Buffy looked at Spike. “Who’s Julla?”

“Just go, love.”

Buffy left, reluctantly, the house boy shooing her all the way. It was a more brusque way of dealing with lingering clients than Spike had seen before, but then, the madam had no reason to curry Buffy’s favor.

Julla looked him up and down. “You’re looking well-rested.”

“So you want to ask me what we talked about? Report to Wrella?”

“Speaking without permission now?”

Julla was the nicest of the mistresses, so he knew he could get away with a wry eyebrow raise. “Punish me. Please.”

“Be quiet. I’m trying to think. No matter how much money I get out of you today, Wrella is going to complain I could have gotten more, but I don’t want you too damaged for the supper party tonight.” She took hold of his arm and turned him in front of her. “That last one was rough with you. No more of that. Try, just try for once, not to be so insolent. Seduce the customers. Convince them they want pleasure over pain.”

“Oi! I’m always nice. It’s the big bad men can’t keep their fists off me.”

“I wonder why.” She started fussing with the lay of his toga, which he sodding hated. It was only going to shift when he walked anyway. “I hope for your sake you weren’t talking escape plans with your former owner. Wrella would adore that. It’d be our only hope of invalidating the claim.”

She caught his eye and Spike felt his throat turn dry, but she just dropped the toga edge and slapped him on the ass. “Get downstairs and flirt. I’ll be pulling you in about an hour.”

***

The villa was lit with a thousand magical lanterns, music seeming to form of its own accord in the corridors and under the swaying trees overlooking the veranda.

“Well, that was humiliating,” Giles said, adjusting the lay of the servant’s toga he’d put on over his suit. His suitcase was secreted inside a cart loaded with what he hoped were snacks. The first cart they’d tried to steal had an entirely different, more intimate purpose for its contents. The matronly caterer had loved that. When his polite rebuffs had failed, Buffy had to practically peel her off of him.

“It could have been worse.” Buffy fidgeted with her own bad disguise. “Now we just have to find Spike.”

“That might be, sadly, simple.” Giles gestured toward a garden pavilion, from which emanated laughter, groans, and grunts of a particularly obscene nature.

Buffy blanched. “Ew. Um. Arm wrestle you for it?”

Giles gave her a look worthy of that suggestion. “YOU are the one who wanted to rescue him.”

“Yes, but I’m young and impressionable and who knows what I’ll see in there!” Buffy batted her eyes in an unfairly innocent expression.

Giles stared at the pavilion for a while. The sounds weren’t getting any quieter. Giles sighed. “Coin toss?”

***

It took a while for Buffy to realize what she was even looking at. A mass of bodies interlocked to form a sort of carpet of limbs inside the pavilion, which was rank with sweat and musk. Helplessly, she tried to scan for familiar features – it was like a pornographic ‘where’s waldo’. Heads bobbing, hips flexing… that was… Buffy wasn’t sure what that was. She inched back toward the curtain she’d lifted to enter.

“No! Where are you going, beautiful boy?” A woman shrieked. Buffy saw Spike then, rising out of the mass, pretty much completely naked, two arms twined around his waist.

“To get you a special surprise, love. You’ll thank me.” He looked directly at Buffy.

Buffy hurried out into the fresh night air. Giles peered at her from behind a column. “Did you see him?”

There was no way to answer that question adequately. “He’s coming.”

There was a loud slap, and a laugh, and Spike stumbled out and on top of Giles’ cart. Buffy grabbed him like he was about to fall off a cliff. “Giles!”

The world went white, and then they were back in the magic shop. Once again, Willow gasped in shock and dropped her bundle of herbs.

“You really never get used to that,” Willow muttered, picking up her materials.

Buffy was standing over Spike, fingers digging into his bicep. She quickly let go.

Spike looked down at the marks her fingers had left in his skin. Then he looked up at her, and around the room. “Well,” he said, and got fluidly to his feet. “Wrella’s going to be narked about losing all this jewelry.” He pulled a ring off and tossed it at Buffy, who caught it on instinct. “Ta. I’ll see myself out.”

“Spike!” Willow stood. “Uh… you’re, like, naked.”

Spike glanced down. He turned in place. He was indeed, stark naked, if you didn’t count the bracelets, anklets, and gems studding his body in some pretty creative places. Buffy realized what she was staring at and averted her eyes.

Spike said, “Yeah. Right. Don’t suppose you’ve got a coat I can borrow, Rupert?”

There was a crash of Giles getting disentangled from the cart. “Let us all promise never, NEVER to do that again.”

Xander was staring, then caught himself and cringed back with hands up to block the view. “Gah! How long were you in there?”

“Couple years. Don’t worry. Didn’t get engaged or anything. Though I had offers.”

Giles slipped his toga off over his head and tossed it at Spike. “Cover yourself.”

“What kind of dimension WAS this?” Willow asked, staring at Spike. Tara, next to her, gently put a hand over her eyes.

Spike looked smug, tying the toga with a little flourish next to his hip. He gave Tara a lascivious wink and sauntered toward the door.

Buffy said, “Wait. You can’t just…”

The bell over the door tingled as Spike opened it. And then as he shut it. “Right. Daylight.” He breezed back through them to the basement stairs. “Think I remember the way.”

Buffy followed him into the basement. She grabbed his arm.

He stopped, looking down at her hand. “Don’t you think I’ve had enough being detained against my will?”

Buffy let go. “I’m sorry. It’s just… you can’t just walk away.”

“Watch me.” He flicked the top of his toga like he would his coat and turned.

Buffy… watched him. And wished she hadn’t. He looked so pale and helpless and naked, padding barefoot down the cinderblock stairs to the sewer tunnel.


	8. The Chip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it's all puppies and rainbows here on out.

The fear started the minute he turned his back. Never disobey an order. Never. Not ever. But it wasn’t an order, was it? And he wasn’t _there_ anymore. He was betting on that magic staying with the place. Betting with each slow footstep not to be stopped.

Betting sounded like ‘begging’ in his mind, and it sort of was, because the fear was growing and gnawing at him. But the pain would have hit. By now. If it were an order. Now for sure. That jutting bit of brick marked the end of the magic shop’s foundation. He’d left the building.

Hadn’t he?

Spike realized he was panting, almost hyperventilating. He paused. He gave in to the urge to look behind him. There was no one there. How was he going to survive this walk to his crypt?

He snarled. Like a badass, that was how.

He stomped the rest of the way to the cemetery and laughed when filthy sewer-water splashed his legs. Mistress wouldn’t like that, would she? Filth and mud and grime. Old friends he’d been too long parted from! He’d get himself good and dirty, wouldn’t he? Smack a wall just to damage his oh-so-precious skin.

How they loved petting him and banging on about his silky smooth skin. Like he was a fucking poodle. He punched a wall. It felt great. He kissed the roughness on his knuckles and punched with the other hand, too, and jabbed his elbow, just to scrape it up.

He went straight to the caretaker’s shed in Restfield. It was the best free water pressure to be had, standing on a grate with the garden hose. Good spray nozzle. Nothing but the best for Sunnydale’s bustling burial business. Only cemeteries in the country making a killing re-selling vacated burial plots.

His rediscovered love for filthiness didn’t stop him from taking the longest shower of his unlife, cold water be damned

He rinsed and scrubbed with oily, pungent GoJo until his fingers were raw and bleeding and he couldn’t smell any trace of the brothel’s perfumes. He unhooked, unstuck and when necessary tore out the gems they’d studded his body with. He paused, regarding the silver ring in his cock. That he’d wait and tackle later. Everything had damn screw-backs. Took him too long to get the belly stud out. Quality stuff, he was sure. He had been throwing the jewels aside like trash. He came to his senses and gathered them up. Money was money. And a handful of diamonds was money. The sun was down and the blood stopped running by the time he was dry.

Never thought he’d feel so bloody nostalgic for his crypt. He stopped in the door, just breathing in the smell of it.

It was all over, wasn’t it? He pulled on a pair of his own jeans and a t-shirt, smelling of comforting cotton and tobacco. Wrella and her mind-games couldn’t reach him here. He looked over a scattering of chunky jewelry on the dresser top and selected the gaudiest, loudest skull ring.

Maybe he’d kick up the punk thing a notch again. Take the tools of prettiness and turn them against themselves. He found his old, stubby eyeliner pencil and heated it with his lighter. He smeared it heavy and haphazardly. Hoped he was doing a messy job of it. That would really piss off the groomers. Like spray paint on their Mona Lisa.

Next, he’d dye his hair some color not found in nature. Buzz it really fucking short, too.

He touched the back of his head, and froze. How would he explain to Buffy about the chip?

***

The pain was intense, blinding him, but if he passed out, it wasn’t for long. He was securely strapped to a hard wooden table, able only to writhe in place as they cut into him. They cut for a long time, and in a lot of places. He wanted to ask them what kind of whorehouse this was, but a hard leather bit kept him from doing more than grunting.

Sarcasm and vitriol were his favorite weapons. He felt more naked without them than he had when the whoremongers had taken his clothes.

That was days ago. In the intervening time, Spike hadn’t worn so much as his own body hair. Other people’s spunk and leavings were the only things he’d had on him and he was getting right sick of it.

Though maybe, considering the being strapped down and the torture, trying to escape hadn’t been too bright.

They cut his feet. It was a hot, intense pain, and odd to hear the bone scraping away under the file. Whatever they did, they kept him from blacking out. Had to be for the sadism of it. Surely their surgery would go easier without him writhing. His limbs were exhausted from struggle. Even his throat and mouth were sore from screaming into the gag.

They jabbed his cock with needles for what felt like a week. It felt swollen five times its size. He couldn’t see, though. A strap held his head down.

He would never snicker at a penis enlargement ad again.

Someone was sewing the skin on his arm when Mistress Wrella stood in front of him, except he hadn’t known her name at that time. Now his memory fills it in, and all the intimate knowledge of how many different ways he loathes her very being. She was holding something small between her thumb and forefinger. She tilted it and light sparked against tiny lines of gold. “What is this? We found it in your head.”

At a nod from her, an attendant removed the leather bit from his teeth. “You got it out, then? Good on you, ducks. And here I was going to give this spa a very bad review.”

“Was it a punishment device? My clerics say it was in the pain center of the brain.”

“It was a leash, but you don’t need that, do you, gorgeous? Got me right where you want me.” Spike rolled his hips meaningfully.

Wasted effort, really. Wrella dropped the chip in a bowl. “You will tell me all you know about it. That is a command.”

And Spike’s eyelids fluttered as a constriction started in his head, in his heart, in his lungs. He ground his teeth and cried out, but all his effort only earned a few seconds of delay. Gripped with horror at every word, at how they just tumbled out of him without editing, he told her about his capture, his humiliation, his alliance with the slayer. He told her everything he knew about the chip.


	9. Made to Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Insert witty opening line here.

Something soft hit Spike on the face. He jumped in panic. “Wasn’t asleep. I was…” he felt the bed, the sheet, the pillow that had fallen from his face. He smelled earth and mold and cinnamon candle wax. He fell back in relief. He was in Sunnydale. He lived here. That other place was just a dream.

And Buffy was staring at him.

Spike ran a hand through his hair. It was dry and tangled. “What time is it?”

“An hour past sunset.” She shifted, uncomfortable, looking anywhere but at him. “You were crying.”

“Was not!”

“In your sleep. And twitching and… I had to wake you up. Hence, pillow.” She gestured at the square of fluff. “Guess that’s why they call them ‘throw pillows’, huh?”

Spike’s jeans bit into his waist as he sat up. He’d slept fully clothed. He wasn’t used to that. But it had felt so good to wear his own things he hadn’t wanted to take them off again. He shifted to pull the back of his jeans up and relieve the pressure in front. “What do you want?”

“There’s some super-strong girl.” She flicked a thumb back toward the entrance to the crypt. “Attacking random people. Thought you’d want in on it. Could be related to Glory.”

“Glory? That was… wait. Huh. I forgot what life was like around here. Sure just let me… “ He looked down. “…put on some pants. ‘Cept I’m already dressed.” He clapped his hands. He lifted his shirt and sniffed it. Still clean enough. What’s next? Comb. Yeah. “I should do something with this first.” He waved a hand around his head.

Buffy perched primly on his guest chair. “I’m surprised you haven’t cut it.”

Spike stopped on his way to the dresser. He felt his hair. He hated having it this long. Why hadn’t he cut it? Well, he was shagged out the night before, and anyway it was still damp when he fell asleep. He could have cut it. No one to stop him. He opened the top drawer of his dresser and dug around, looking for the clippers. He found them and held them up, staring at them. He wanted to buzz his scalp on the number three setting. He checked the length and switched the clippers on. The buzz was healthy and strong. Good batteries. Of course, they hadn’t really been sitting for ten years. He tried to reach for his head. He couldn’t move his arm. He thumbed the clippers off. He turned to look at Buffy.

She frowned. “What is it?”

“Order me to do something,” Spike said. “Anything. Just… something simple.”

“Why?”

“I can’t.” He waved the clippers up and down. “Maybe I’m just losing my mind.”

“Spike. Jump three times.”

He felt the command of it. He fought it. He felt the constriction, the pain. He jumped three times in place. Then he threw the clippers back in the drawer. And kicked the dresser, which hurt his foot so he slammed the drawer and swept all the junk off the top and stomped his foot. Buffy was staring at him. Spike sighed and pushed the annoying, long hair back from his face. “Well, that answers that.”

“What… what was that?”

“I thought it would stay in the brothel. It came with me. The… whatever the fuck they did to make me mind. Turn me into their little lap-dog.”

“You mean anyone can order you to do anything? Anyone at all? Like Dracula and Xander?”

Spike bit his lip. He’d forgotten about that. Stupid celebrity vampires. Then he scowled. “Bloody hell. I’m Xander in this scenario?”

“That… really shouldn’t be the part you find most wigful.”

Spike nodded. He felt his hair, behind his head. Long enough to pull. That’s what they liked. It would get in his eyes, fighting. He’d need to find some elastics until he could get it chopped off. Or a very very large amount of gel. He sighed. “Bugger it. Let’s go then.”

Buffy gaped at him as he stood in front of her. “Huh?”

“Super strong girl attacking random people? What do you think it is? Demon possession?”

“But what about your… thing? What if super-strong-demon-girl asks you to dance?”

“Be her lucky night then, won’t it?” Spike shouldered past Buffy with more bravado than he felt.

A nagging and usually-correct voice at the back of his brain said he shouldn’t have shown Buffy his weakness. He could, and should, find a way of undoing the curse without involving the slayer or anyone else who might want to stake him if they found out he was minus one government-issue chip. Just for example. Maybe.

He found himself touching his hair again. Would the spell stop him from asking someone else to cut it?

Buffy caught up to him at the crypt entrance. “Spike, maybe you should sit this one out. It’s just one strong girl. Maybe the guys have already figured out her deal and sent her on her way.”

Spike turned to frown at Buffy. “You don’t think I can do this? Is that it? Can’t watch your back when I’ve spent so much time on mine?”

“That… no. EW. I just… you’re obviously feeling wiggy and I was only asking you along to…” Buffy covered her mouth, cutting herself off.

Spike darted into her personal space. “To what? Throw me a bone?”

She grimaced. “To distract you.”

Spike reeled back. “Don’t need your pity, slayer.” He stormed off, hoping Willy had some good rotgut in stock and some bad customers he could beat to a pulp to pay for it.

He totally wasn’t stopping to see if she was following and he wasn’t disappointed that she wasn’t and he definitely wasn’t standing there, hoping she’d appear behind the Lawson Tomb and he could twirl on his heel and stalk off just as soon as she…

She didn’t appear. He twirled and stalked, anyway.

He didn’t need the slayer or her do-good missions. He was a free vamp. He could bathe in the blood of the innocent! And smoke. Christ, could he use a fag. He felt his jean pockets and cursed himself for storming off without his coat. He bet there were cigarettes still in the pocket. It had been ages since he had a good old-fashioned teeth-yellowing breath-destroying smoke. Heaven forbid you indulge in a vice half your clients used! Last time he’d tasted tobacco, it was on someone else’s tongue.

Spike froze, mid-step. Was the not-smoking a standing order? Like not cutting his hair? Could he even…?

His stomach growled, interrupting his panic. He hadn’t eaten since that morning, when one of the houseboys had brought his daily blood, grimacing as usual. The shite those kids saw every day, and feeding the vampire was what put them off. If it weren’t for the compulsion, he’d have gladly drained every last…

No. No, he had to be able to feed.

Spike didn’t bother being picky. He listened for the nearest heartbeat and ran toward it.

The first pain was when he tried to call forth his demon face. (Not pretty, they said.) The second was when he tried to grab the human by the arm. (The customer initiates contact.) The third was a wall that stopped him dead at the thought of hurting someone.

Spike sank to his knees next to a trashcan. The man in the bus company jacket scooted to the other side of the bench. “The hell is wrong with you? Damn kids, drunk on a school night!”

He couldn’t even draw his fangs. It was worse than the chip. A thousand times worse.

He half-crawled to a fence, which he used to get to his feet. He returned to the crypt. “Buffy?” Her scent was fading. The crypt was emptier for containing it. Probably better that she was gone, though. He could barely stand the humiliation without an audience. He went downstairs and got his coat and wallet.

When he up-ended the leather billfold, a nickel, four ticket stubs, and a receipt for dry cleaning fell out. Damn his past self. Still, the coat had gotten demon-snot on it and only Fairchild Cleaners could get that out.

The concerts had been good, too, but he really should have just vaulted the fence for that last one. Seemed unnecessary at the time and he wasn’t a skinflint. Well, how was he to know he’d end up actually needing his money?

Spike blew the dust out of the bottom of the empty wallet and looked around for something he could sell.

***

Willow and Tara approached softly. Buffy looked away from the still face of April. She was a robot, but she’d been alive. She really had loved her no-good creator. Tara took Buffy’s hand. Buffy let the witches lead her away from the swing set.

“Are you okay?” Willow asked.

Buffy took one last glance back at the still creature on the swing. “That was the single most depressing thing, ever.”

“You were there for her,” Tara said. “That’s what matters.”

“And now we’re here for you!” Willow declared, spreading her arms wide. “Girlfriends and chocolate-based beverages.”

Buffy ducked her head. “Not a bad idea, after the day I’ve had.”


	10. Mundane Matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Spike shows he's a resilient vampire and Buffy confesses to inappropriate vamp-thoughts.

Buffy rested her head on the high-top table at the Espresso Pump. “And it’s not like I was trying to be all… condescending. But one little comment and he was all ‘I don’t need your pity’ flapping off in the night like a… bat… vampire.” Buffy grimaced. “Not my best pun attempt. You’ve seen him do the flapping coat thing, right?”

“It is bat-esque,” Willow agreed. “Oo. Mocha.” She rushed to the counter and eagerly reached for the first of their beverages. “Is this the soy or the whole? Oh good, whole is for me.”

Tara ducked her head low. “You think Spike is having trouble, adjusting a-after…”

“Being stuck in ho dimension for a decade? Yeah.” Buffy immediately felt sorry for how strongly Tara blushed.

“But,” Willow said, sliding into the stool next to Tara. “He’s Spike, right? I mean, he’s pretty tough. Century of murder and mayhem tough.”

“You didn’t see him, Will.”

“Actually I saw a lot more of him than I ever expected to.”

Tara nudged her. “And you didn’t look away.”

“Totally gay now,” Willow assured her.

“Can we not talk about that part? I’m not ‘gay now’,” Buffy said, “And I know I shouldn’t even think about him in a… not-gay way. I mean. One: evil. Two: Not boyfriend material. Three: squick-worthy scenarios I am partially responsible for, which leads to: Four: Guilt. ARGH.” Table, meet Buffy’s head: round two. “How did we get on this conversation topic, again?” Oh right, it was the LESS depressing choice.

Willow put her hand on Buffy’s. “We all share responsibility for Spike getting stuck in another dimension. But hey, we got him out okay, didn’t we?”

“And that should be the end of the Spike-thoughts. Believe me, I want it to be the end of the thoughts. But it’s like… I can’t help it. He does this thing with his tongue and his teeth when he smiles and it’s all sexual and you know how sometimes he’ll light a cigarette so slowly you get the feeling the cigarette needs a cigarette afterward?”

“No,” they both said, in unison, giving her these blank looks.

Buffy felt defensive. “I was engaged to that!”

“Briefly,” Willow said. “In a spell. That you made me apologize for. A lot.”

“Valid point. Big big valid point. With the truth and the validity. But at the same time…”

“Oo those are the other two mochas,” Willow hopped down. “I better get them before we’re poached by a mocha-thief.”

Tara cleared her throat. “At the same time, seeing Spike all… dolled up reminded you that he’s an attractive man?”

“He didn’t even have roots showing. And it worked with his skin tone! How fair is it that they had the perfect blonde hair dye?”

Tara’s smile was a little too amused. “Not fair at all. I’m guessing.”

Buffy laid her head on the table. “I’m evil. Evil-Buffy. Thinking bad thoughts about the traumatized evil dead. Not even just the normal evil dead. What does this say about me? Am I just feeling this hormonal because he’s all… hurt and vulnerable?” Something twitched in her subconscious at the word ‘vulnerable’, like a cat ready to pounce. She sat up. “Oh god, I am. This is all about the vulnerable. Two days ago, he grossed me out!”

“Or it’s about the unexpected, long eyeful,” Willow said, and, catching Tara’s glance, added hastily, “which wasn’t that long or even that good because who’s into perfect skin, sharply defined abdomens and muscles?”

“Stop trying to convince me,” Tara said.

Willow kissed her cheek. “I had a boy phase.”

“Which is over,” Tara said, smiling as Willow gave her a tiny salute. She then turned to Buffy. “You’re not a bad person, Buffy. Spike is an attractive man, even I see that, and it’s okay that you see it, too. You… you aren’t thinking of starting a relationship with him, are you?”

Buffy took just a second too long to say, “Ew. No.” Buffy took a big sip of mocha and made a face. It was so thick! “Did one of you get my soy latte?”

Cups were quickly exchanged. Buffy sighed after a sip of the proper beverage. “Anyway, it’s done. Spike’s back, he’ll be fine, and we’ll be hating each other again in a week. Meanwhile, life is actually pretty good. I should quit complaining.”

“I find it’s fun to keep doing it, anyway,” Willow said. They all smiled.

Buffy gathered up her coat and drink. “But I should get home, mom is expecting me tonight, and I’m hoping to get the dirt on New Guy. Thanks, you two. This really helped.”

***

“That’s a real diamond, you git,” Spike leaned over the pawnshop counter, grateful his little problem didn’t stop him from issuing dirty looks.

“So what if it is?” The dealer tossed the ring back on the counter. “Do you think my customers can afford that? I’ll never unload it.”

“Put it on sodding e-bay.”

“Why don’t you?”

Spike groaned. He ran his hands through his hair. Could he put something on ebay? Use the computer at the magic shop? If he broke in when Anya wasn’t about, he could. But where would he list as his mailing address? Buy a post office box with his no money? Maybe use the Magic Box? Course he’d have to bat his baby blues at Rupert, first. It had been a while, but he could remember how it had turned out the last time he’d asked Rupert for a favor.

Spike scowled at the pawnbroker. “You know I could kill you, right?”

The pawnshop guy did not look the least bit impressed. Probably had wards on every inch of the underside of the counter. Also he was part chirago demon on his father’s side. Spike sighed and fished through his pockets. “How about this, then? It’s just a chain. Anklet. Think it’s gold.”

“I know this stuff is hot, Spike.”

“Oh come off it! You had no trouble buying any of those car radios I brought you.”

He shrugged. “Try the jewelry shop.”

“You know I can’t do business in the day time.”

The man shrugged again. “I can’t take stuff I can’t unload. Car radios move. Get me a dvd player and I’ll make you a happy vampire. This stuff? It’s too hot to be worth it.”

“Trust me, you can leave this in your case for twenty years and its original owner won’t see it there.”

“Wow. Really convincing me it’s not stolen.”

Spike stormed out into the night, not a buck richer. He rolled the diamond between his fingers. It was hard and sharp and pissing him off.

Well, nothing to be done at the moment. It wasn’t like he was going to brood about it. He had a half-full belly thanks to the pig-blood leftovers in his fridge. What he needed was someone he could talk to without feeling like he had to put on a show. Someone with a good telly and chocolate.

He smiled and turned his feet toward Revello Drive. Joyce hadn’t given him the dirt on this new guy, yet, and he bet that she wouldn’t say no to an unexpected gift of high-quality jewelry.


	11. The Body

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry. Especially to those who wanted a nice Spike/Joyce scene.. because *I* wanted a nice Spike/Joyce scene, and never got it written.

Buffy was really surprised to see Spike approaching her from the front of her house. He was back in classic Spike Costume, with his longer hair slicked back with what must have been a gallon of gel. He held out two hands. “Don’t go in there.”

“What? Why? What are you doing at my house?”

“Came to see your mum.” Spike glanced back. The streetlight glinted on the sapphire in his eyebrow and a thin stripe of water on his cheek. “Don’t go in there, Buffy, please. Just… no one should go in there.”

Buffy ducked under his grab and shouldered past his attempt to hold her, a panic rising in her. “Mom?” She ran up the steps. The front door was open.

She didn’t hear Spike follow her in.

She didn’t see anything at all, or remember much, for a while, but Spike was there, holding her, when the paramedics came. Then he was talking in a quiet way about what time it was when he found the door open and when was the last time someone was home and if he knew when this and that. Mr. Yamaguchi from next door had seen her mom come home. All the Yamaguchi family was there, and the family who lived on the other side, whom Buffy had never gotten to know. People were walking by slowly with their dogs, staring at the blue and red lights. It was all so unreal. She wanted to close the front door, but a police officer was standing in it. Talking to Spike.

“Sir, 214 Maple Drive is the Restfield Cemetery.”

“I’m, uh, well, yeah. I’m the caretaker. You know, trim the bushes and whatnot.”

Buffy pushed Spike into the wall and demanded, “What did you do? What did you do to her?”

“Nothing. I… ow. Chip, remember?”

He looked unsure. Like he was lying. Buffy gathered handfuls of leather and slammed him. “You did something; you can un-do it.” His head broke the plaster, and her mom was going to be mad about that.

His face crumbled. “I’m sorry, love. I’m so sorry.”

Then the police were prying her fingers out of fists and asking her to please step back, please be calm, please, we need you to sign a form, we know this is a difficult time but do you have the phone number for your sister’s friend and what is your primary care physician’s name?

There were hours and hours of it, and Spike slipped away, of course he did, it was daytime now, and who knew death was so full of forms and repeating the same facts over and over?

***

It was as if the gods themselves had decided to kick Spike while he was down every way they knew how.

He had no idea where his next meal was coming from, Buffy was heartbroken, and the only person he knew who could offer comfort was…

Spike finished off the last of his bottle of whiskey and threw it at the side of the building in front of him. “Useless hospital. Don’t take a dog to Sunnydale General! Don’t know a damn thing about brain surgery. It’s not rocket science, you know!”

He sniffled. He was a bit drunk. That was the last bottle that had been in the crypt. Also, he’d guessed wrong about the day for Sunnydale General’s blood delivery. Fuck he was hungry.

A guy in scrubs approached. “Hey, are you all right?”

Spike sneered. It was his best weapon. Wasn’t that pathetic? “If I wasn’t, wouldn’t want your lot touching me. Piss off and go kill another decent woman.”

The man straightened with a look of understanding. “You must be a friend of Buffy’s. I’m Ben. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“You could be sorrier,” Spike said, and shoulder-checked the guy. It was the worst thing he could get away with doing. Well, leaving broken glass all over the ground, too. He tried to comfort himself with that thought as he wandered back toward his crypt.

At the entrance to the cemetery he caught a scent and it made him stop dead. As if not being able to attend the funeral hadn’t been enough. Had he actually thought to himself, even just to himself, ‘it can’t get worse’? Because he hadn’t, so it was completely unfair that it had just gotten worse.

The sharp apple scent of “LA Looks Extra Firm Hold”, a hint of peat, leather and silk. Angel was in HIS sodding cemetery.

Spike approached and confirmed: It was even worse than that. Angel was holding hands with Buffy. Sharing a quiet moment with Buffy, who would never love Spike back despite his crazy, idiotic, nonsensical devotion. How had he spent a decade telling himself that this girl was going to save him?

Except she had. In the end, Buffy had saved him, like he always knew she would. And now he loved her even more. Pathetic.

Spike sat down on a tombstone and rolled an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “Okay, fates, I’ll bite. It can’t possibly get ANY worse than this.” He put the cigarette between his lips and let himself just taste the end of it. The compulsion let him get away with exactly that much. If he reached for his lighter, he’d drop the cigarette. He could also light a cigarette, but not raise it to his lips. Holding one out and trying to get a second hand buzz was frustrating as all fuck, so he’d only done it the once.

Angel looked straight at him, through intervening branches, over Buffy’s shoulder, like an arrow shot. Of course he did.

Spike smiled and walked back to his crypt. He wished he could bet on this outcome. That would make some cash. He could practically time it.

He settled in his chair, put his feet up, turned on the telly, and then counted in his head. “Three… two…”

The door to the crypt slammed open. Spike laid his head back, eyes closed, and said, “Piss off, Angelus.”

“What were you doing, stalking us?”

Angel stood over Spike, fists at his side, doing that looming, threatening thing that probably worked for him with some people. Spike held up two fingers. “In case you missed it, I live here, you berk. What were YOU doing on my lawn?”

Angel’s enormous brow creased slightly, which meant he was actually thinking, which was cute, really, but Spike turned up the volume on the TV. It was a used car commercial, but that was better than listening to Angel.

Who grabbed two handfuls of Spike’s shirt and hauled him out of his chair.


	12. That Dear Old Sire of Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spangel! Sorta. I think of this chapter as a gift to all of you for enduring the sorrow-inducing previous chapter.

Spike was completely fucked any way you looked at it, dangling helplessly from Angel’s fists. So there was no time like the present to see if he could hit demons. Spike smashed Angel’s face with his forehead.

Spike felt the impact, that sting in the sinuses. It felt surprisingly good, even as he was thrown across the room to land half on a stone sarcophagus. Spike laughed and licked blood from his lip. “It’s good to be home.”

He launched himself back at Angel with all the pent-up fury and frustration of a decade restrained. Angel looked stupefied for the first two punches and only just got his feet back under himself to parry the next kick.

Angel vamped out. “I knew you were still evil.”

“Because I ever said different?” Spike punched him right in the fangs. “Chip never cared about vampires.” Apparently, neither did Wrella’s mojo-men. Whether it was design or oversight, he owed those perverts at least one small favor.

He got in another good shot to the snout. “Soul or no, you’re still a demon.”

Angel was on the defensive, backing up, getting low, bleeding from his great big forehead. Spike could hardly contain his joy. He delivered a spin-kick, and another, and fetched out the stake from his back pocket.

That’s when Angel swept his legs out from under him. Spike tumbled to a stop against the wall and tucked his legs under to spring again when Angel growled, “Stay down!”

***

Angel had not expected Spike to come at him with such passion and anger. He almost wondered what it was he’d done this time – surely Spike didn’t know about him setting Drusilla on fire, did he? And even then, well, it wasn’t the worst thing he’d done to Spike. Not even the worst thing he’d done that year. That was definitely the post-Gem-of-Amara beat-down and Angel wasn’t proud of how far he took that, but Spike hadn’t acted like it mattered to him the last time they butted heads.

Whatever it was, Spike was fighting with purpose and vengeance and this was not going to end with a snappy one-liner. Angel was doing all he could just to keep his guard up. He saw an opening and got some separation at last. He couldn’t survive another assault. Spike had wood in his hand. “Stay down!” He growled, not expecting to be obeyed, but expecting it to shake the other vampire.

To Angel’s surprise, Spike froze, crouched. His eyes were burning with hatred – gas flames lined in black coal. “What do you want?” Spike snarled.

“What’s gotten in to you? Why are you trying to kill me?”

“Because normally we’re such chums?” Spike side-stepped, still in a crouch.

Angel tracked with him, hands out. “Drop the stake.”

Spike winced like he’d been kicked. The stake hit the ground. Spike sat down where he was, holding his head and swearing a blue streak. Angel was more than a little confused.

But not so confused he didn’t kick the stake away and immediately jump out of striking range. Spike didn’t react. Spike had a ponytail. When had he gotten a ponytail? Angel asked, “Are you… okay?”

Spike gave him a look full of sarcastic pity. “I’m out of blood and cash and I can’t bite people and you’re here, and oh yeah, Joyce Summers is dead. So yeah, I’ve had better days.”

Angel had never thought about Spike and Joyce, aside from that one time he’d had to rescue Joyce from Spike and Spike had been all but singing songs at him behind her back. Had he misread that entire thing?

“Fine fucking buggering miserable fucking situation. I can’t even- fuck!” Spike punched his palm. He looked miserable.

Come to think of it, Spike had always had a soft spot for mothers. Like that time he wouldn’t let Dru kill the headmistress at that orphanage. Of course, Angelus had killed her anyway.

Angel coughed, uncomfortable, and found a place to sit on the floor in front of Spike. “Joyce never liked me.”

“Yet another example of her excellent taste.” Spike picked at polish on his nails. It was silver, an unusual color for him, but then Angel never understood Spike’s choices in costume.

They just sat there for a moment, which was weird. Spike stopped muttering curses and started to just look… bored. Angel noticed a hole in Spike’s earlobe, looking raw, where an earring had been taken out. There was a slight scent of blood. Angel didn’t understand why any vampire would get a piercing – the hole stayed raw while pierced and healed up as soon as you removed the jewelry. It must have been removed recently. That made Angel think about Spike’s skin and piercing it and blood and… he had to stop thinking down those lines. Spike had succulent little earlobes. Not that Angel was going to tell him that. All… earlobe appreciation had been pre-soul. If you didn’t count that submarine incident. Which Angel totally didn’t.

Spike scowled at him.

Angel cleared his throat and quickly looked away. “So, um, how are—“

“For the love of Pete. If I let you shag me, will you please just leave?”

Angel very briefly lost the ability to draw in breath to speak. Spike smirked. “Oh look at that. I broke your wee brain.” He leaned onto one hand, and then the other, a stalking cat-crawl toward him. “Poor Angelus. That souled life is lonely and dry, I’d wager.” His mouth hung open after the second syllable of “wager” like he was tasting the air.

Fifty percent of Angel (mostly below the waist) thought this was an excellent development, but enough blood remained in his primary head that he realized something was very wrong with this picture. Spike didn’t flirt with Angel. Spike didn’t stop fighting. Usually not even when he was beaten. Especially not then. Spike also didn’t crawl into Angel’s lap and kiss him lightly, like it was something he did all the time. Even that one time, when Angelus had used every trick of manipulation to coerce William just because consent made it so much more humiliating… he hadn’t gotten a kiss out of it.

And now he was inappropriately turned on, mind lagging behind body as he gathered up handfuls of lithe delicious body. Such nice lips. He remembered the heady feeling of having a confused young William completely at his mercy, apologizing for not wanting to do what he didn’t want to do. Just that hint of tears in the air. So young and firm and virginal and…

Wait, how had he gotten on this thought track?

Oh right. That tongue in his mouth. No, there was no world, no scenario he could imagine where Spike would willingly kiss him.

Angel held Spike out at arm’s length. “What are you planning?”

Beautiful blue eyes rolled skyward. “Well, first I was going to nefariously wriggle in your lap, then you were going to shag me and leave, but if you prefer, we could go back to the fighting. It was working so well for you.”

“This isn’t… this isn’t like you.”

Spike tilted his head. “You want me to be me?” He rocked back on his heels and got to his feet in a fluid motion that had Angel leaning forward to follow, his lips almost touching the tantalizing sliver of abdomen that peeked out between black t-shirt and black jeans.

And then Spike kicked him in the head. Angel sprawled face-first on hard concrete.

“Get out of my house,” Spike said.


	13. An Unexpected Tangle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for all those Spike/Angel/Buffy triangle shippers. You know who you are.
> 
> Also a gentle reminder that, like, the season 5 plot is continuing.

Angel scrambled to his feet. Spike looked killing-angry, fists clenched, breathing heavy. Angel felt whiplash, and not from his head hitting the concrete. He didn’t get it, not one bit, but he knew when to give up and save figuring out for later. He didn’t even bother going for the door, but broke out a window and hit the cemetery dirt running.

He stopped once he was clear of the crypt to dust the dirt off his slacks. That was when he saw Buffy, standing there, watching him. “Uh… I thought you went home,” he said.

“Ditto,” Buffy said.

“There was... um… a vampire?” Angel mimed staking.

“In Spike’s crypt?”

Angel coughed, tucked his hands in his pockets, and said, “Behind it. He, uh, I think Spike might have stalkers.”

Buffy folded her arms. “Uh-huh.”

“Yeah. Uh.” The silence lengthened. This was so awkward. Their visit should have ended with the quiet companionship they’d shared just a short time ago. WHY had he had to go after Spike? “So, um…” Angel waved and ran for it.

He was in his car before he thought to ask what Buffy had been doing near Spike’s crypt. That was weird too, wasn’t it? Almost, no, JUST AS weird.

He almost turned around just to say that. Almost.

***

Spike was shaking, and angry at himself for shaking. Still, it had been a close call. He didn’t know how much longer it would take even someone as thick as Angel to figure out what was going on. And soul or no, he suspected Angel would take full advantage once he knew he had an advantage to take.

Fists into concrete, pressing hard. He calmed himself. So what? He was still himself. He could take it and dish it back out.

He almost believed himself.

Spike cleared out all the trash from under his chair and television and the little stand next to the fridge, that was designed to hold a large floral arrangement but he’d nicked it to serve as a mini pantry. There were no traces of un-consumed alcohol in the entire crypt. He kicked some dried leaves and looked up to see Buffy standing in the doorway. “Oh for fuck’s sake, what is this? Viewing hours?”

Buffy’s eyes welled up, her chin jutted out, and she turned back to the door. Spike hissed and hurried to catch up to her. “Forget I said that. I’m a bad, rude man.” He was half afraid she’d hit him as he touched her arm. He was half afraid she wouldn’t. He couldn’t cope with sad Buffy. “Just Angel getting under my skin. You know how we are: like oil and holy water.”

Buffy wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “It wasn’t... I’m… forget it. I’m crying all the time now for any reason.”

“It’s expected,” Spike said. “S’allright.” He put his arm around her and, to his mixed joy and fear, she leaned against him. She gave one more soft sniffle, and relaxed more. Spike thought his chest would burst. “There. All right,” he said, patting her back and petting her hair.

After a very, very long time, he dared kiss her forehead gently. He waited for the retaliation, but it didn’t come. That’s when he realized that of the two of them, he was the one not relaxing.

***

Behind an oak tree near an obelisk, Glory’s minion took in the tableaux as Buffy and Spike held each other, gently swaying in the moonlight.


	14. Forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *wew* This holiday-celebrating business is more work than I recalled.
> 
> Anyway, have another installment for your Boxing Day!
> 
> It's heartwarming and adorable and Spike & Dawn fun!
> 
> Only heartbreaking and sad.

Spike heard scrabbling in the cemetery so he put down the car stereo he was carrying home and approached cautiously, expecting a fresh fledgeling to take down.

The sound was coming from near Joyce’s grave, which gave him a sudden, unexpected bolt of hope.

A hope dashed as he got closer and smelled human sweat and fruity shampoo. It was Dawn, on her knees, digging at the fresh sod they’d put over Joyce’s grave.

Perhaps not entirely dashed.

“I hope it’s just dirt your after,” Spike said. “Anything more and you’re getting into zombie territory.”

“I’m not! I… I mean…” the girl looked adorable, all caught out with black magic like it was a diary or a photo of a teen heartthrob. “Don’t tell Buffy.”

“I won’t tell on you. I’m going to help you.”

She got a canny look in her eyes. “Why? This isn’t just because you have a crush on Buffy, is it?”

“Are you joking? Tell Buffy any of this and she’ll drive a redwood through me. Just… don’t like Summer’s women taking it on the chin so hard.” He held out a hand. She reluctantly let him help her to her feet. “So, let’s take a look at that spell you’ve got. Hrm. Grave dirt, check. An image of the deceased -- I’m sure you can swing that. These herbs we can get at the magic shop. Hrm… this bit I’m not sure of, but I know a guy.”

“You’re really going to help me?” Dawn followed him out of the graveyard.

“Said I would. Let’s hit the magic shop first.”

“Don’t take as long picking the lock this time.” She sat down next to the magic shop door and looked up attentively like a kiddie at story time. Spike suspected she was trying to learn his tricks. He moved so his shoulder hid the view. She sighed. “Where you really in a hell dimension for ten years?”

Spike pushed the door open and gestured forward triumphantly. “Just like old times for us, eh, Niblet?”

“Not that old for me. Ten years ago, for you. In a HELL dimension.”

“It wasn’t a hell dimension, per se. Anyway, stop saying that. Suspect Buffy’ll blame me if you’re cussing.”

“But if ten years have passed for you, have you known me for longer than I’ve been alive?”

Spike smiled quietly to himself as he browsed the shelf of herbs. He found what they needed and pocketed it. “It is pretty cool, isn’t it? Like time travel. Since you last saw me, I’ve gained the mysterious and mystical wisdom of a decade.”

“Anya said that you came out of there BUCK NAKED.”

He grimaced. “It was, uh… a clothing optional dimension. And hot. Kinda hot there.”

“Please. Buffy and her friends were trying really hard not to talk about it around me, but I know it was some kind of sex thing.”

Spike must have looked comically aghast, because the girl covered her smile with both hands and looked like she was going to fall over. “Wash your mind out with soap,” he said, and tossed her a bar of “Healing Energies: Chamomile Rose”.

She pocketed the soap pretty deftly. “I’m fourteen. I’m not a baby.”

“Didn’t say you were. Wouldn’t help a baby raise the dead. Now come on, let’s see if that bloke I know is home.”

She re-locked the door and closed it behind them. “You promise you’re not helping me just because of Buffy?”

“Will you let it rest? Fact is, when you aren’t being annoying, you are the more fun of the Summers girls.”

Dawn preened at that.

***

“Mommy?” Buffy stared out on the empty porch, the empty lawn. She collapsed, crying hard, as she hadn’t let herself do, not in front of anyone. Especially not in front of Dawn, but she was crying, and they were both crying and it felt… good. Like letting a wound breathe.

When she calmed down, she wondered why Spike was standing across the street, watching the house.

He was still there when she peeked through the bathroom window after brushing her teeth, so she climbed down the outside of the house.

There was a silly habit.

“All right?” He asked, stepping out of the shadows as she stepped off the rose trellis.

Buffy dusted off her hands on her pajamas. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t want to intrude, what with the… with the everything. But I was worried about you. And the Niblet.” He took out a cigarette, held it, but didn’t light it. “So… you all right?” He tilted his head.

It was so… normal. He was dressed the same as always, talking the same as always, like a gulf of death and years didn’t separate last week from this. “How do you do it? Spike, how are you still... still you? How do you endure and come out the other side without leaving a chunk of yourself behind?”

He smiled sadly, said, “Night, pet,” and walked away.


	15. Intervention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Spike gets a prezzie! (And so does Glory.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost done! Only four chapters after this one! Will I be conscientious enough to post it all by New Year's Eve? Stay tuned!
> 
> Also this might be the spuffiest thing I have ever written.

Buffy found Spike rooting through her weapon chest the next morning. The house was a wreck, and he was wrecking it more, tossing blades and crossbows over the sofa. “Hey? Home invasion much?”

Spike laid a blade against his palm like he was testing its weight. He tossed it aside. “Don’t you have any magic swords?”

“What with the huh? Is there a magic-sword emergency I should know about?”

He half-shrugged. “You can feel them, the magic ones. Kinda burn, kinda itch.” He tossed another sword aside and the chest was empty. He looked depressed.

Buffy picked up her very best sword – thank you very much – and lovingly laid it back in its place. “New rule: Don’t come into my house and mess up my stuff unless there’s an apocalypse.”

“Sorry,” he said, quietly, and that wasn’t Spike-like in the least so it made her stop and stare at him.

He shifted and fidgeted, looking anywhere but at her. “It’s just… it was a magic sword, yeah?” He fingered his eyebrow. Was that a safety pin in his skin? EW. He finally looked at her. “I need a magic sword to get my scar back.”

“That’s stupid,” Buffy said, meaning anything but.

“Just want to look like myself again.”

“You don’t have a reflection. You DO look like yourself.” He looked miserable. She put the crossbow back next, since it was largest. “Let’s check Giles’ stash.”

***

It wasn’t like they were exchanging promise rings or some bollocks like that, but something had shifted in the way Buffy looked at him. It was… softer. When she casually touched him, her hand lingered instead of pulling back.

Buffy handed him the first knife. He touched it and shook his head. She set it back and handed him the next.

It was good. It was strange. Was this… affection? Friendship? Courtship? Spike was a little perplexed by it, but at the same time, if you didn’t get to do something completely new now and then, what was eternity for?

“Ah, hot!” Spike dropped the next dagger. It glinted on the floor, a narrow thing with a scrolling Spanish inscription. Damascus steel. Flowery Cavalier-era handle. Spike toed it and flipped it over. No cross or other religious symbols to cause the burning. He shook his hand. “I think we have a winner.”

Buffy picked the dagger up and frowned at it. “So… how do we…”

Spike touched his brow. He knelt, so his head would be at an easy height for her. “Just… right where the pin is, sort of that angle. Oh, um…” He unhooked the pin. The skin gripped it as he pulled it out. But, hopefully, there were two wee red marks on either side of the eyebrow to guide Buffy. It felt odd… no, wrong, sitting there, waiting to be hit by the slayer.

He looked up. Buffy shook her head. “Shouldn’t we, like, do this in battle or something?”

Spike felt his chest swell. “That’s my girl!”

Soon enough they routed a nest of vamps passing a joint behind the Shady Acre’s mausoleum. He wanted to ask her how she was planning on cutting him but that felt awkward and there was all that lovely violence to deal with.

The vampire he was strangling vanished in a puff of smoke and as he stumbled forward, he felt a sharp, burning cut on his brow. He looked up to see Buffy above him, the knife curled back.

“I…”

Buffy jumped high and decapitated the last vampire with a stunning spin-kick.

In the quiet of settling dust, she pointed at him, still holding the knife. “Don’t say it.”

“Say what?”

She started walking back to the front of the cemetery. “Anything flowery or rhyming, for one. I’m a little afraid to let you near anything as sappy as ‘thank you.’”

Spike said, “It was you.”

Buffy turned in mid-step. “Huh?”

Spike shrugged. “You asked, back a bit, how come I’m still me, yeah? How I got through all that nasty slave business without breaking. I couldn’t answer before, but now I can, I guess. Because I trust you.” He shrugged and gestured at the ground. “We’re back to killing things together, so we shouldn’t keep things bottled up between us. And yeah. It was you. You got me through it all.”

Buffy looked down. She tucked her knife behind her and shook her head. “I didn’t, though. I fell asleep after the battle and didn’t get to Giles until the next morning!”

She looked so upset, and all for him. He cupped her cheek. “Doesn’t matter how long it took – I knew you’d come for me, yeah? That kept me going – knowing I had a hero looking out for me.”

Were those tears? Glittering in her eyes? For him? He brushed one away with his thumb. “There now, love, don’t cry.”

Buffy bit her lip, she almost shook her head, and half opened and closed her mouth, like she was having trouble deciding what to say. “I want to kiss you,” she said.

Spike grinned and brought his face close to hers. She stopped him with a hand flat on his chest. “I don’t know if it’s okay, that I want that. Or if…”

“It’s all right,” Spike said, almost laughing, but she still held him off.

“I mean for me as well as for you. I know you’re okay with kissage. You’ve always been more than okay with kissage and not shy about it. I’m not sure I am. I’m not sure what I’m feeling for you is healthy.”

“It’s not meant to be,” he said, and he kissed her, gently. He pulled back to see her looking a little surprised. “Was that so bad?”

She answered by pulling him down for a harder kiss.

***

“Buffy, I was hoping to find you,” Giles followed the sound of fighting into the cemetery and quickly put a mark in the book he was studying. “I may have found a clue as to…” he looked up and his voice trailed off.

Buffy and Spike were standing in a clearing between grave markers, kissing.

Giles took off his glasses and put them back on. “Uh… Buffy?” No response. He cleared his throat. No response. He took a few steps forward and in his loudest voice said, “Good lord, this isn’t a spell again, is it?”

Buffy and Spike broke apart like caught-out teens, which was exactly what they resembled. Spike had blood on his cheek and a smear of lipstick on his mouth.

“Uh,” Spike said. “There was… something… something evil on my… uh, lips?”

“Don’t help,” Buffy hissed.

“No,” Giles said. “By all means, help me understand what I just witnessed.”

“I’ll, uh. I’ll go,” Spike said.

“The hell you will,” Giles said.

Buffy stepped forward. “Take the Giles alarm down a notch. All right: I kissed Spike. We kissed. There was kissage. It was a moment, and it’s none of your business.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Still not your business?” Buffy held her hands out.

Giles wanted to drag her home and ground her for eternity. But she wasn’t a child. Had never been HIS child. Instead he turned his wrath on the vampire. “You should have stopped her.”

Spike blinked. “What?”

“Buffy is in a vulnerable emotional state. You are old enough to know better.”

Buffy said, “Oh wow. Now my boyfriend gets to make my decisions for me, too?”

Spike got a ridiculous smile on his face at the word ‘boyfriend’. Giles could see no path at all to victory in this confrontation. He tucked his book under his arm. “I’ve found some information on Glory. Come see me at your first convenience, if you care at all about stopping her.”

Giles felt the silence behind him. Good. That was at least a strong parting shot.

***

Spike was walking on air. The fizzy burn on his eyebrow brought back delightful memories. He couldn’t wait to check his look in the photo booth outside the drugstore.

Better yet, Buffy had, no matter how vociferously she’d denied it afterward, called him her boyfriend, and she’d kissed him and didn’t stake him afterward. Those were two things he never thought he’d see. It was time to celebrate.

It was worth braving the scorching sun to sell a few gems at the jewelry shop on Main. They took all the gold chains, too, though they no doubt robbed him blind.

A haircut and dye job later, Spike was happily stocking his fridge and pantry with pig’s blood and whiskey, respectively, when Xander kicked in the door. Well, that was unexpected.

“You’re disgusting,” Xander said.

That wasn’t. Spike closed the fridge and folded his arms. “What did I do this time? Threaten the good citizens of Sunnydale with my legal commerce?”

“You’re using Buffy’s grief to sneak into her life.”

“Oh boo bloody hoo. Giles set you up for this?”

“And she’s confused. Horribly, grossly confused by you and your rampant nudity.”

Spike couldn’t help smirking proudly. “Rampant, was I?”

“Yes. No. GAH.” Xander looked away like the sight of Spike hurt his eyes. “Stay away from Buffy.”

For the love of Christmas. That couldn’t be a command, could it? Spike held up his hands. “Look, Harris. Sorry I confused your sexuality with my forced nudity. Or did you forget I wanted no part of that?”

“You volunteered.”

“And you’re fucking welcome.”

“I don’t know why we don’t just stake you.”

“I dunno.” Spike tilted his head back, licked his lips, and, like always, went straight for the quickest path to a face punch. “Lack of balls?”

He laughed. It was so easy to piss people off. Of course, getting his head slammed into the wall by a human boy was not particularly fun, and about this point was when he wondered why he loved pissing people off so much.

And then, as he was working on getting his ass kicked, a group of foul-smelling freaks in monk’s robes busted in and took over the entire operation, leaving Spike very confused, and shortly very unconscious.


	16. Glory, Glory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Glory. You guessed that was coming. Very good. Have a cookie.

Spike didn’t know what he expected to find when he woke from being knocked out, but it was not to be in an elevator with his hands tied behind him and a half-dozen scabby faced monks.

They muscled him out of the elevator and… had he seen this small woman before? Wait… woman, scab-faces. He groaned. “For the love of kittens, we’re still fighting Glory? I don’t even remember where we were in this plotline.”

Glory stood before him in all her bitchy, well, glory, hands on hips and hair perfectly primped. “What the hell is that, and why is its hair that color?”

“Stunning one, we believe he is... the Key!”

“Really? That's fantabulous. And impossible!” Her eyes seemed to bore right through him, and from her frown it wasn’t a very deep view. “He can't be the Key. 'Cause you see the Key has to be pure. This is a vampire. Lesson Number One: Vampire equals Impure.”

“Damn right I'm impure! I'm as impure as the driven yellow snow. Let me go!”

“But your Unholiness, we observed the Slayer. She protected this one above all others. She treated him as precious.”

Glory turned from nearly having walked away. “Really? Precious? Let's take a peek at you, precious.”

There was a glint of interest in her eyes now. Bugger. If Spike had a heartbeat, it would have stopped. All Glory had to do was order him to tell her who the key was and, unless there was a “No Hell Gods” clause in that curse, he was well and truly fucked. “You said so yourself: I’m a vampire. If I could, I’d sell everyone out for a tin nickel.” Did that come out a little too desperate?

The next thing he knew, he was flying across the room. “Doesn’t look very special to me.” Glory picked him up again and tossed him onto a bed. She crawled over him. Maybe this was good, he thought. He could seduce her. Wasn’t like he hadn’t had loads of practice. He struggled to get up on his elbows and give her his best leer as she straddled him.

“Oh, I’m special, all right,” he purred. “Come take a closer look.”

“Maybe appearances are deceiving. Maybe there's something on the inside? What can I dig out of you?” She jabbed her unnaturally strong talon into his chest.

If she stuck to pain, he could work with that. He laughed and arched upward. Her finger was a knife separating muscle and bone. “Promises, promises. Ah.” It got hard to breathe as she pressed against his lung, but he managed, though not nearly as sultry as he intended, to gasp, “Gonna spank me? I’ve been bad.”

As he hoped, she drew back. “The disgusting little creep is enjoying this. What do I do now?”

Spike forced himself to breathe slowly in. It hurt like coals in his chest and the last thing he needed was to choke on blood or something. “Tell me. How does a hell god get off, usually?” Head tilt, eyebrow raise. “I might be able to do something with that information about now.” If only he could get his bloody shirt off. He shifted, very subtly, to lift his hip against her thigh.

Spike hadn’t really wondered what that light fixture would feel like smashing against his cheek, and as he tumbled back to the floor, he reflected that he was going to be learning a lot about what his body and the furnishings could do to each other.

“You’re cute,” Glory said, stalking over to him, “But not that cute.”

“Give me a chance, love. You won’t even have to untie me. Do you know what’s great about vampires?”

She hauled him up by his bottom lip. THAT hurt. She smirked. “You’re breakable?”

He licked her finger and she let go with an “Ew!”

The disgust didn’t bode well. He crowded close before she could back away. “We can hold our breath for hours.”

She dug her nails into his floating ribs. “You’re a chatty bloodsucker. It’s not attractive.”

He gasped against her ear. “Better things I could be doing with my mouth.” Please… fuck… how was he failing at this? He had no idea how long he could keep her from ordering him to tell her who was the key.

She snapped his fingers, one at a time, while he nibbled her jawline.

He landed on the bed again. She stood over him with a perky smile. “You’re persistent. Full marks for that.”

“I’m no use to your quest for this whatever-it-is,” Spike said. Keep driving that home, mate. “Excuse me for making sure you’ve got some reason not to dust me.”

She stepped over him. “Honesty. I like it.” She dropped onto his chest, slamming his broken fingers underneath him. “You really don’t know anything, precious?”

Thank fuck for vague phrasing. “I know a few very specific things,” he curled his tongue behind his teeth and raised his eyebrows.

That must have given her enough curiosity, because she looked thoughtful and didn’t try to tear anything off of him for a change. He shifted, despite the pain in his fingers as they dragged between his body and the bedclothes. FUCK those sheets and their wrinkles. He nudged her skirt up with his nose and gave her a saucy look. “Wanna see what I know?”

“Sure, Precious. Let’s see what you can do. I need to think, anyway.”

***

Xander ran, trying to catch up to Buffy. “I get that you’re worried what Spike will say to Glory, but… gah… breathing. Breathing is needed.” He fell against a lamppost and pointed with his crossbow. “I’ll catch up.”

Buffy turned and grabbed his arm. “You don’t understand. He’ll tell Glory everything he knows. He can’t help it. There’s a mind-controlling spell on him. It makes him obey ANYONE.” Buffy looked grimly from Xander to Anya. “We have to kill him before she asks. We may already be too late.”


	17. Debriefing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter came out a bit long and info-dumpy, but, well, time's a wasting!

Xander had just enough spare thought to pick Spike up from the floor as they fled Glory’s stronghold. Spike looked like hell, and barely got his feet under himself as Xander pulled him forward.

He kinda didn’t want to think about the weird ways he was injured, or the fact that Glory had seemed… well, more than seemed. She was satisfied. She looked relaxed and lazy and rather than come at them full-force had mostly sent her minions. Xander knew that look. Xander had had that look.

He really hoped that moisture on his shirt was blood.

Buffy ran in front of him. “Wait.”

“How about not waiting? We barely got out of there.” Xander said.

Buff picked up Spike’s sagging head by the chin. “Did you tell her anything? Answer me!”

Spike’s shifted against Xander. “No,” he said.

“Spike, I order you to tell me if you told her anything.”

Spike stiffened in Xander’s arms. He pulled himself upright. “Didn’t tell her anything. I kept her from asking. You think I would lie to you? Now?”

“We have to be sure,” Buffy said. She was crying. Xander tried to say something, but all he could do was open and shut his mouth a few times.

Buffy ran. Like she was running away from them.

Spike sagged again. Xander nearly dropped him. “Little help, G-man?”

“Of course,” Giles said, and hurried to take up a position on Spike’s other side.

Together they got Spike up on the sarcophagus in his tomb. The guy looked, paradoxically, less dead than usual, what with all the very living-colored blood on him.

So maybe things weren’t as sexy as Xander initially thought. “Did you have to poke the hell-god?” Xander asked.

Spike laughed brokenly. Xander wanted badly to wipe his hands, but didn’t see anything available other than Spike. He knew from sadly specific experience that whipping your hands on a tomb just got them dirtier. “Let’s go. I need to wash my everything.”

“In a moment, Xander,” Giles said. He was looking very intently at Spike.

“Oh come off it, watcher,” Spike said, his laugh sobering.

Giles asked, “What did they do to you, exactly? The artificers?”

“What do you care? Made me even more helpless, didn’t they? Perfect for you and your white hats.”

“If what Buffy said is correct, all Glory had to do was ASK and you’d betray us.”

“Oi! Not…” Spike groaned in pain after trying to sit up. He fell back, eyelids fluttering. “Not willingly. Wouldn’t do that to her.”

Giles was starting to look downright scary. “Yes, but we’ve quite established it doesn’t have to be willing.”

Xander was shocked to see the stake in Giles’ hand. He was more shocked that Spike looked at it resignedly and fell back, like he was going to let Giles stake him.

Xander grabbed Giles’ arm. “Hey – he endured torture for us.”

Giles turned the scary-as-heck face on Xander then. “Which is why I asked first.”

“I don’t bloody know,” Spike said. He threw an arm over his eyes. “Fuck, if I knew what they did, I’d undo it.”

“Giles.” Xander stopped Giles from striking once, then again. “Listen… I was ready to stake him myself, but now… it doesn’t feel right. If he’ll follow any order, order him to stake himself before he tells who the key is.”

“Stake himself?” Giles looked horrified, suddenly, but he also stepped back and stopped trying to make with the dusting. “No. No I’m not thinking clearly.”

Look at that, Xander Harris, you just saved Spike.

It was hard to hold the sarcastic quip in, lest it ruin the moment.

“Very well,” said Giles. It was his patented decision voice. He tucked the stake back into his coat. “We can’t leave him here. Help me get him to my car.”

“And then where?”

“We’ll figure that out when we get there.”

***

For lack of a better plan, Giles brought Spike back to his home, bandaged him up and gave him blood. Just to keep him from bleeding on the upholstery.

The children all gathered. Spike sat on the sofa in Giles’ living room, still looking raw, but his wounds weren’t actively bleeding anymore. He held a mug of blood in both hands.

“Are you finally settled enough to talk?” Giles asked. “I’m getting tired of your petulance.”

“Oi. Just been tortured, remember?” Spike sighed. “First thing you need to understand is… Glory is Ben.”

He said something odd that seemed to slip right off Giles’ ears. “Ben is involved with Glory somehow?”

“No! Ben IS Glory. Glory IS Ben.”

The individual words made sense, but Giles was having a distressing time piecing meaning from them.

“Look, Glory is inside a human body, get it? One body, two completely separate beings. It’s like a bloody sitcom.”

Giles nodded. “Yes. Of course. The beast requires a host.” That was what he’d just learned in his researches a few days ago. Spike must have read it as well. “But who?”

“BEN! And, apparently, if you make her very VERY happy, she can have trouble keeping control. As it where. Hence: Ben is Glory, I nearly had my eye poked out by an unexpected cock, and Glory was none too pleased about the whole business. Also, Ben is straight, if any of you had designs on him.”

“Wait,” said Willow. “I’m confused. You’re saying Ben was with Glory?”

Spike put down his mug. He looked as confused as Giles felt. “Are you all very stoned? Glory is Ben, Ben is Glory.”

Giles shook his head. He felt like he was about to grasp something important. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Enough of this nonsense. You were going to tell us what the artificers did to you.”

“Where to start? The feet? I’ll start at the feet.” He flexed his toes and leered.

“Dawn, go to your room,” Buffy said.

“We aren’t even at home.”

“Go to Giles’ room, then!”

Giles couldn’t begin to ponder how dreadful that idea was, however... “This might be… not exactly suitable for minors.”

“What about me?” Xander raised a hand. “Can the over-18 be excused on account of trauma?”

“If I have to stay, you do,” Buffy said. Then she looked guilty and went back to leaning against the wall and chewing her nails.

Spike rolled his eyes extravagantly. “For fuck’s sake, I’ll keep it kiddie-friendly.”

Dawn smiled delightedly.

“You clearly have no idea what those words even mean,” Giles said.

“You want to hear this or don’t you?” No one moved. Giles had to admit he did want to hear. He nodded.

For some odd reason, Spike got up, wrote a note, and slammed it into Giles’ hand before resuming his seat on the couch.

“Ben is Glory” the note said. What on earth did that mean? Giles tucked it into his shirt pocket.

Spike looked down at his feet. “Apparently, my feet weren’t 100% as attractive as they could be. They carved out my bunions and re-shaped my crooked pinky toe. That’s the level of detail these wankers operate at. They plumped up my calves a little, I think. Lost some feeling on the backs of them, anyway. Then it was my knees. A bit of de-knobbification, I guess, or some knee cap reinforcement for long periods on ‘em. I didn’t exactly get briefed by my health care provider. Then they moved on to the not-safe-for-Dawn areas. That was a long and detailed procedure, you can imagine.”

Giles said, “There must have been something they did which was the last thing before you started obeying every order. THINK.”

Spike scowled. “Am thinking. Berk.” He drained off the last of his mug of blood. “Chip,” he said. “All right? Happy, everyone? There’s my one secret I was trying to keep from you all and I had better just say it and escape the humiliation of being ordered. It was after they took out the chip.”

Willow and Xander, who were on the sofa on either side, moved a little further away from Spike.

Giles pressed forward. “The government microchip in your head? Why would they take it out?”

“Dunno. Said they just found it there.”

Giles took off his glasses. “They found it.”

“And major wigging for the elective brain surgery?” Buffy asked. “Or is that just me?”

“Of course,” Giles said. He ran to his desk and started pawing through books. The Codex of Wallandra… had he put it away? No, there it was.

Xander asked, “Uh, Giles? Want to share with the rest of the class?”

Giles ignored him, flipping frantically through pages, his glasses in one hand. “Ah! Here it is. Among the talismans frequently crafted by the Artisans of the City of Wallandra, The Artifice of Obedience, an amulet carved from the bone…” he looked up at Spike, “Of a human skull.”

“Which means?” Spike asked.

Willow got a sick look on her face and cringed against the sofa arm. “We’re going to have to cut his skull.”

“But I’m not… well, I guess my SKULL is human.” Spike looked thoughtful and amused.

The drawing indicated the back of the skull, right where the curve was deepest. “With artifacts of this complexity, merely disrupting the design should suffice.” He looked up. “Well, of course, we would need to cut the skull, but then, we just have to, well, scratch out part of it, I guess.”

“Lovely. Let’s get skull-scraping.” Spike set his mug down on the coffee table. “Want to do this in the bathroom? Less blood everywhere.”

“Woah. WOAH.” Xander held out both hands. Everyone looked at him. “Guys? Are we forgetting something? The chip?”

“Oh dear,” Giles said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Buffy said. “We need to protect Dawn, no matter what the price.” She frowned. “Spike… if there were any other way…”

Spike jumped away from her. “So kill Glory, then! You know she’s Ben, he’s a human, a bullet from a nice safe range and the universe is safe for kittens and puppies!”

Giles was horrified. “Why are you talking about killing an innocent human? No, Buffy, Xander is right – we can’t risk unleashing an evil vampire.”

Spike groaned. “I pretty please promise not to bite any of you.”

Spike looked genuinely confused that they would find his casual assumption that their own safety was all they cared about horrifying. “What?”

Giles closed his book. “We’ll have to stake him.”

Spike bolted over the back of the couch and out Giles’ back door, narrowly missing Xander, who fell onto the floor to avoid him.

“Wow, even injured, that guy can move really fast,” Xander said.

Buffy smacked Giles on the arm. Not lightly.

“Yes, I suppose it was rather thick of me to up and say that in front of him,” Giles said, and sighed. “I suppose you ought to chase after him before he does something foolish or ends up captured again.”

“Ya think?” Buffy said. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and grabbed a crossbow from beside the end table with all the drama only she could summon.

Giles sat down to read the complete description of the talisman.


	18. Epiphany

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's that Dick!Angel I promised!

Spike didn’t bother swinging by the crypt to pack. When the Slayer decided to slay and you could be ordered not to fight back, you didn’t stop to pack. He took his quickest route to the Restfield parking lot.

Blame his hurry for not noticing the convertible parked next to his Desoto. Ditto not noticing Angel until the other vampire was standing in front of him with a hand on the car door, blocking him from getting in.

Spike tried to calculate how much time it would take to beat down Peaches, and if he had that much time before Buffy caught up, or if a well-chosen phrase would be better.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Angel said.

“I have. Ghost of the bloke who stood in my way.” He gave Angel what he hopped was a meaningful glare.

“I thought we could talk,” Angel said, frowning, hands in pockets, looking like he had some emotional constipation he wanted to work out. The big girl’s blouse. That could take all day.

Spike decided it was safer just to get him out of there. “Hop in. We can talk on the road.”

Angel gave the Desoto a disparaging look. “No way. We’re taking the Plymouth.”

Fuck. He loved the Desoto. He hoped he could come back for it. He hopped into the passenger seat of the poof mobile. “Just drive. Out of here.”

Angel just drove. Thank fuck for small favors. Spike twisted about, checking for approaching slayers as Angel made his way at god-damned-legal-speed to the freeway.

Then the poof started to talk. “I smashed a guy’s hand today.”

“So help me if you start nattering about how poetic or beautiful it was…”

Angel used turning onto the on-ramp as an excuse to give Spike a disgusted glare. “That’s Angelus.”

Spike turned all the way around in his seat, watching Revello Drive vanish, and then Main Street. “Come off it. If you were really two separate people, you wouldn’t have the same miserable taste in music.” He was almost free and clear. He’d just have to wait for Angel to stop the car and he could make his second escape.

“What are you looking… wait, it’s Buffy, isn’t it? You’ve pissed her off at last. I’m turning around.”

“No!” Spike said, defensively. He hunched down in his seat, unable to think of a convincing lie. “Just drive. Wanker. Drop me off wherever.”

“No, Spike, you see, I had this epiphany…”

“Epiphanies. Bollocks. Either you’re getting a literature degree or you really ARE the same bloke as Angelus.”

“I slept with Darla,” Angel said, at the road, like it was the road’s fault.

That was odd. Was the old tosser feeling guilty about his past relationships as well as all the good stuff?

“…and okay, I acted a little, tiny bit evil. I killed some people who REALLY had it coming and pissed off all my friends.” This was promising. He was sounding a lot less goody-goody than the last time they spoke. Until he sighed all soul-heavy and said, “I have had one of the worst weeks.”

“Well, mine has been grand by comparison.” Spike batted his eyelashes. “Ever embarrass a hell god?”

“It doesn’t have to be a competition.”

“Of course not, Poof. Just funnier that way.”

Angel had that angry determined face, like he would knock a brick wall down with his forehead rather than change direction. Spike sure hoped he knew where he was driving.

“Forget all that. Let me skip to the end: You kissed me,” Angel said. There was an edge of accusation.

Spike had to change the direction of this conversation fast. “I kiss a lot of people. When they aren’t being wankers. Think you can let me off at this next exit. Should be far enough away to keep me clear of angry hell gods.”

Angel passed the exit. “So I was thinking about that kiss, the other night, when I was with Darla…”

“Wait… Darla? That was recent? Dru told me she was dead. Said YOU killed her.”

Angel scowled. “Let me finish a sentence, would you?”

Spike felt compelled to be silent. Damn it. He raised his brows and made his most sarcastic “I’m listening” expression.

Angel glanced at him, twice, and got a hint of a smirk. That wasn’t a good sign. “Yeah, about that kiss…”

He signaled and swerved into a rest area so fast that Spike had to hang on to the door. Then he slammed to a stop and jerked the parking brake up. He rested his arm on the steering wheel. The smirk was definitely in place, now. “I want another one.”

Well, at least that was a finished sentence. Spike coughed. “Um… uh…”

“Now, Spike,” Angel said, and his eyes were glittering with delight.

And just like that Spike was moving closer, grabbing the rotten tosser’s sleeve and sliding into his lap. Was that triumph or confusion? Spike wished Angel were easier to read. He kissed him. He meant to make it a cold peck, but Angel brought his arms tight around him and opened his mouth, licking Spike’s tongue out of his own mouth.

Well, it wasn’t so terrible, kissing Angel, and it wasn’t proof positive that the poof knew what was going on. Spike let himself relax into it, the comfort and pleasure, being held.

They both sighed when the kiss ended, and Angel gave him a surprising, gentle squeeze.

“Liam…”

“Shut up, and get back in your seat.”

Spike was shocked by the cold tone. He did as told, of course he did, damn it.

Angel said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He put the car in gear and pulled back onto the freeway.

Spike’s mind raced. “What was what you thought?”

“You had to do what I said. It’s the only reason you’d ever kiss me. Now be quiet, I’m driving.”

Spike watched the exits pass as they made their way into Los Angeles and wondered if he had the guts to launch himself into traffic.

***

Buffy found Giles pacing the back of the magic shop. He had a few books spread open and a crumpled note in his hand that he kept looking at. The air was heavy with incense and hot with burning candles.

She didn’t have time for this. “Giles? I can’t find Spike.”

Giles didn’t look up from the note. “Hm? Oh… yes… just a moment, please. I was just in a trance…”

“This is no time for trancing. Spike is GONE. I need him, now, because Glory is on her way and we’re going to die.”

Giles blinked distractedly. “It was supposed to reveal magics, but the note just says… I’m sorry? What about Glory?”

“Glory knows Dawn is the key. I need Spike. We’re getting out of here, NOW.”

“What on earth would you need Spike for?”

Buffy had hoped to present this as a done deal, but… “My plan involves getting all of us out of here, and we need a van or something, and Spike’s the only experienced car thief I know.”

Oddly, Giles got a slight smile at that, but he quickly cooled his features. “Perhaps thievery is not necessary. Get everyone together. I… may have a solution.” He looked down at his paper again.

Buffy wanted to smack him, but she was pretty sure that wouldn’t speed things up. “Okay. We’ll be at Xander’s place. Hurry.”


	19. Happy Ever After?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, at one time, this was the LAST CHAPTER. But you will all be very happy to see I added another chapter after it, which I will post (hangover allowing) tomorrow. Past-me could be almost as much of a dick as Angel, who is really a solid phallus in this piece.

Spike had no choice but to sit while Angel wove angrily through the thickening traffic. He’d barked a “Don’t even think about it” the minute Spike had lifted his ass from the seat to jump. Bastard. He hated orders not to think about something. They were the fucking worst. Your mind couldn’t help itself, could it? And so your lines of thought kept jerking back on themselves and making you feel like you were going crazy.

And speaking of crazy, Angel kept complaining, “Of course, it would never be because you liked me. Because we had a connection. History. It’s some goddamned spell. That’s the only reason you’d kiss me.”

It was almost adorable… if Spike weren’t very aware of how much trouble he was in. He licked dry lips and ventured, “Get this curse off me and I promise I’ll give you a big wet one.”

“You couldn’t just tell me, either! I had to figure it out.”

What a great detective he must be. “Obviously, I was afraid you’d take advantage. Like say kidnap me and turn me into your love slave.”

The scowl lifted just a bit. “I’m not saying I’m not considering it.”

“You can stop considering it. You’re one of the white hats now, remember?”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. My epiphany. Good and evil aren’t black and white – there is no black and white. Sometimes you can do a bad thing for a good reason, and sometimes actions are just, well, actions.”

Spike wondered why Angel couldn’t have an epiphany about not being a huge cunt. “You’re supposed to have a soul.”

“You’re supposed to NOT. And shut up.” Angel laughed. “GOD that feels good. I could almost be perfectly happy, being able to shut you up at will. No,” He held up a finger as Spike drew in a breath, “I’ll tell you when you can talk again.”

Bugger.

***

Buffy paced near the blinds in Xander’s living room, resisting the urge to peek through them again. The lights were off and the room was hot with everyone’s breath and sweat. They were anxious, and Tara was babbling, and where was Giles? He said he was going to get a freakin’ van!

Had he said that, exactly? He’d said not to worry… but he’d been so distracted.

Xander came back from the kitchenette. “Still no answer from Giles’ apartment. Did he say where he was going?”

Tara cried out, “The light! So blue! I’m falling! I’m…”

“Shush,” Willow said, “honey… baby… shush.”

“Stop,” Tara said, brushing Willow’s hands away. She stood up, frowning around herself. “When did I get here? Why are the lights out?” She turned in a circle. “W-why are you all looking at me like I grew a second head?”

Willow grabbed her hand. “How do you feel?”

“Hot,” Tara said. She sat down again. “I was… oh god, Glory!” Her eyes went to Buffy.

“Yeah. Glory knows,” Buffy said. The moonlit parking lot was remarkably free of information. Xander had moved his car to a parallel spot on the street to leave room for whatever vehicle Giles brought, and Buffy found herself staring at the bare pavement like it would spontaneously produce an RV.

She was sure Spike would have had no trouble stealing the crappy old Winnebago that had been rotting in Celebrity Dan’s Used Car Lot for the past… forever. They’d be on the road, already. Was Glory tracking them? Did she know about Xander’s apartment?

Tara said, “What happened to me? I was in the park.”

Willow said, “Do you remember anything else? Oh, baby. You were freaking out and you pointed at Dawn and no one blames you, not one bit!”

“But Tara’s okay now!” Dawn said. “Does that mean… what does that mean?”

Anya brushed against Buffy’s shoulder, trying, like her, to peer at the sliver of window between the blinds and wall. “Could it be because Glory doesn’t need to find the key anymore?”

“None of the other crazies recovered,” Xander said, under his breath and with an anxious glance back at the witches on the couch.

“Maybe we should run without Giles,” Anya said. “Glory isn’t after him. We can fit six in the Pontiac if we cram.”

“Not and have a driver whose leg can move,” Xander said.

Buffy paced. “I don’t know, I don’t know.” A flash of headlights washed through the blinds. She ran to peek. “That’s Giles’ car!” She carefully smoothed the blind and picked up her ax. “Stay here.”

“If we’re goin in that we’ll have to take two cars,” Anya said.

Buffy hurried to the door, which Xander unbolted and, she was pleased to hear, bolted again behind her.

Giles got out of his car unhurriedly, stopping to put his keys in his pocket and adjust his shirt like this wasn’t the end of the world.

Buffy ran up to him. “What’s going on, Giles?”

“Oh, Buffy. Are the others all here?”

“You know they are. What’s the plan? Do we have a plan?”

Giles closed the car door. “It’s quite all right,” he said. “Glory is no more.”

Buffy almost dropped her ax. “Giles? How? What? How?”

He tucked his hands in his pockets. “My trance. It unlocked… well, a secret. A weakness Glory had hidden by magical means.”

Buffy did drop her ax. “You should have told me. I… you took her on yourself? What if you were killed?”

“I couldn’t know that you would be able to see through the spell, and I had to act quickly. Heaven only knew how long my clarity would last.”

There was something scary about Giles just then. Buffy couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was a cold vibe that warned her away from asking more questions.

Still she had to ask, “Is Dawn safe?”

He sighed, suddenly looking very tired. “As safe as any other teen in Sunnydale. Come, let’s tell the others they can come out of hiding.”

***

Angel knew right from wrong, really he did.

He knew exactly how Wesley would react to him sneaking Spike into the Hyperion via the loading dock, taking him up to his room and undressing him. He knew WHY Wes would react that way.

He just couldn’t quite remember why he cared.

He had to see, and touch, and there was something thrilling about the way Spike stood there, letting him. The old wound on his eyebrow looked raw again. Angel wondered about that. He kissed it, touched the copper sweetness with his tongue.

Spike closed his eyes and stretched his neck, exquisitely expressive, even in silence, he let Angel know he was annoyed, thought Angel was being a girl, but was willing to play along if he got a gentle nuzzle on his cheek.

Spike could write pages with a head-tilt.

The marks on his torso told a different story. Angel tore off the black tee to find violence haphazardly applied. Angel felt like an artist finding his fresh canvas covered in toddler’s fingerprints. He kissed each wound. An ugly bruise was darkening over one of the floating ribs. Angel pressed, checking the break. Spike groaned, long and eloquently. “That hurts, but stop fussing you mother hen,” that groan said. Angel led him to the bathroom.

“Off with these stupid tight jeans,” Angel said, tugging the waist. Spike made toeing off his boots look like an act of defiance.

He smelled delicious – torture and sex and – was that Giles’ soap? Yes. Bayberry rum or something like that. He could smell it on Spike’s skin and in the bandages. The watcher always had a streak of darkness. Had he done this?

Angel removed all the bandages and washed the wounds fresh with his own soap. Spike rolled his eyes and, as Angel wrapped gauze around his ribs, patted Angel’s hair.

Sarcasm without words. Well, Angel was feeling indulgent. The sweet swell of Spike’s ass against his palm did that to him.

Fuck he was hard. It was torture not to thrust into that compliant, silent body. He cold order him to bend over, grab the sink-edge.

Spike’s hand on his cheek calmed him. Spike looked calm, himself, serious. Like he was asking a question. What question?

Spike kissed him, a slow, gooey kiss, like warm caramel. Angel ached. He whimpered.

But, no. He knew right from wrong. Angel chose to believe it was affection, more than compulsion, that had Spike follow him to the bed and lay down beside him. So pale on the black sheets, and just as silky, Angel let his hands wander up and down all the undamaged skin.

He didn’t go further, though. He knew right from wrong. And they would have time.

He pulled Spike against his chest and held him. It felt so good just to have someone else, someone to hold, who wasn’t going to ask for anything in return. The sweet torture of gentle touch on his aching cock.

Angel kissed Spike’s nape. “Relax,” he said. “Sleep. We’ll talk in the morning. Have some blood.” He laced his fingers through Spike’s and brought the hand up to kiss his knuckles. “Live happily ever after.”

Spike huffed, but didn’t say anything else.


	20. Redemption

Buffy saw something shiny on the littered crypt floor. She squatted to pick it up – a lighter. She felt the smooth metal turn in her palm.

“Buffy?”

Willow leaned in the door – it was jammed open, now. Too many kicks, Buffy guessed. Buffy waved.

Willow picked her way over the strewn trash. “Still no sign, huh?”

“He’s helpless, Willow. Anyone he runs into could just… use him.”

Willow bit her lip. “We could do the locator spell. Got a map?”

“You aren’t going to lecture me about how evil he is?”

Willow shrugged. “I’m guessing that wouldn’t change your mind.”

Buffy hugged her friend. “You guessed right.”

***

Angel was making great progress with Spike. With him obediently staying out of sight and silent, the rest of the gang had no idea he was even there, and having someone to order around helped with the sting of Wesley being in charge of the detective agency.

He had told himself he wouldn’t take advantage, but there was something so… willing in Spike’s motions. His lingering glances. And then, one morning, Spike had shifted – no, had PUSHED BACK against him and Angel’s control snapped like a thread.

He fucked him a bit hard, that first time, but that was partially frustration. Anyway, Spike had taken it well. He hadn’t even cried out, though his whole body shuddered and the smell of blood in the air was unmistakable. The bed had sounded horrible, squeaking and creaking and like it was about to shake apart, but Angel could hardly stand to slow down, much less stop. He’d had to pick Spike up by the hips and throw the both of them onto the floor. The impact had been sweet. He came so hard he couldn’t move for the longest time.

It was only later he worried what the others might have heard, if they were listening, or in the hotel. He was more careful the next time.

The power was intoxicating. Having this beautiful body, whenever he wanted it, however he wanted it. In the shower, leaning against the sink, “That’s it, baby, wiggle your ass for me.” On the floor, against the wall. He could lay back in bed and just have Spike ride him, slow and languid. He could really put on a show, hands running over himself, biting his lower lip.

Cordy asked him why he was spending so much time up in his room alone brooding. He made up excuses. “I’m reading a really good book.” Or “I’m taking some time off.”

“I’ve always enjoyed being alone. You know that.”

***

When Giles opened the magic shop the next morning, he was surprised to find Willow and Buffy already there, working a spell on the large table at the back. They looked up guiltily. He frowned. Candles, a folded out California map, a silver Zippo lighter and a gaudy gargoyle ring…

Giles sighed. “You’re looking for Spike.”

“That’s right.” Buffy lifted her chin.

Giles could see the fight before him, and it didn’t look at all easy. “You aren’t thinking clearly, Buffy. We’re in no danger. Glory is gone. Spike is not our problem anymore.”

“He wasn’t our problem. He was our ally. This isn’t about what we need, it’s about doing what’s right.”

Giles felt rather like he’d been stabbed in the heart. He felt like that a lot, lately, every moment that he got away with murder. Because it was what they needed. To be safe. It wasn’t right.

He was beginning to forgive Raskolnikov’s need to confess in “Crime and Punishment” – it had seemed over-the-top before he was in the same situation.

“We know he’s not in Sunnydale,” Willow said. “And we narrowed it down to Southern California.”

Giles sank into a chair. “I have given it some thought. We could construct a series of orders to allow him…”

“No,” Buffy said.

“No?”

“We’re undoing the spell. Scraping the talisman. It’s wrong, Giles. You can’t take someone’s will away from them.”

“But, Buffy, he is a vampire.”

“If he turns evil, I’ll stake him myself, but I’m willing to take the chance that he could become good.”

“It’s never been recorded to happen – a vampire redeeming himself without a soul.”

“So he’ll be the first. Or I’ll be wrong. It doesn’t stop it from being the right thing to do.”

Giles felt an ache leave his shoulders. It would be nice, for once, to do the right thing. He stood up. “Let me fetch you a more accurate map.”

***

Angel spent every minute he was out solving cases impatient to return to Spike. It was important to do good, of course it was, but now that Wes was handling the boring stuff, wow, he had free time and he was using it.

Spike gave him looks, sometimes, that Angel had to turn away from, because those piercing eyes obviously asked when he’d keep his promise to lift the speaking ban. Sometimes those eyes pleaded, begged, and he wanted to… but he was still nervous how the others would react.

Besides, Spike was so beautiful silent. Angel drew him with his sweet lips around the tip of his cock. It was a long, slow self-torture, in front of the room’s fireplace, the light flickering and over-warming them. Spike held still, perfectly still, as instructed, but now and then his tongue would move, a delicate swipe, or he’d swallow, just a bit, to keep from drooling, and the pleasure was sharp as a whiplash. Angel allowed himself a few gentle thrusts into that delicious mouth, but mostly he was being good, keeping to his work. This portrait would be a testimony to anticipation.

Cordy’s voice carried from downstairs, indignant and loud, “If SPIKE were here, I’d know it.”

Spike’s lips pressed slightly and he chuckled, deep in his throat. It felt wonderful, precisely as much as the icy stab in his gut didn’t.

“Stay there,” Angel said, and set down his pencil and drawing pad.

He looked back at Spike, kneeling by the fire, naked, his sweet little ass cupped by his pretty bare feet.

Then Angel zipped his flies and stepped into the hall, locking the room door behind himself.

“Cordy?”

“ANGEL get your brooding butt down here,” she responded.

That didn’t sound good.

Buffy stood in the middle of the lobby, arms crossed, looking murderous. “Where. Is. Spike.”

Giles was with her. GILES? In jeans and a grungy, rough-weave sweater, looking like he could cut glass with his frown.

Angel cleared his throat. “Uh… did he do something?”

Cordy gave him a look. “Did the evil vampire DO something? That’s your first question?”

“Spike is harmless,” Buffy said. “You both know that.”

“Our location spell was clear. He is inside this building,” Giles said. He held up a section of LA Street Atlas. “What the hell were you thinking, Angelus?”

Why did it have to be GILES? The man made him feel so guilty. Moreso than usual. Angel looked at his feet on the carpeted stairs. “He’s in my room.”

Cordy gasped. Buffy ran past him.

Angel hurried to beat her to his door. “Wait. I should… hold on, I’ll ask him and…”

And Buffy kicked down his door.

Spike was, of course, right where Angel had left him, naked in front of the fireplace, posed for his picture.

It didn’t look like such a pretty picture anymore.

Giles said, “Oh good lord!” in a very accusing tone behind Angel.

Buffy tore the coverlet off Angel’s bed and wrapped it around Spike. The way she looked at Spike… like she wasn’t even thinking of Angel enough to be angry at him… it hurt.

“I…” Angel began.

“Oh shut up,” Giles said, and they left, the three of them, without another word. Left him alone with Cordy, whose mouth was hanging open, and who crossed her arms under her breasts and arched an eyebrow expectantly.

Stupid epiphanies.

***

Buffy and Giles had come to rescue him. Again. This was getting to be a bad habit. Spike stared in disbelief as they bundled him into Giles’ tiny back seat. Buffy leaned between the front seats. “Do you… should be getting something from Angel’s room?”

Spike shook his head.

“I’d rather buy him a whole knew wardrobe,” Giles said, “Than go back in there.” He shifted the car into gear like he was punishing it.

Spike’s throat was sore, and he had to cough, to lube it up, as it were, before he could talk. “What are you going to do with me, then?”

Giles muttered something under his breath, but Spike didn’t hear it with Buffy’s hand on his, her wide hazel eyes on him. “We’re going to undo that spell, that curse, that thing. But you’re going to have to make a promise, Spike. A promise to be good. Can you do that?”

Spike laughed. He was the slayer of slayers! He had found the Gem of Amara! Did she really doubt he could complete any quest set before him? “For you… for my hero and my love, yeah, I can do anything.”

“And now I have diabetes,” Giles said.

Buffy’s gaze didn’t waver. “No, Spike. That’s not good enough. You have to do it for yourself.”

That did sound harder. It wasn’t the spell, however, compelling him to rise to the occasion. He felt like he could leap buildings just then. “Sure can, pet. I’ll make you right proud. And I’ll do it my way.”

And at that moment, as she pressed back between the seats to kiss him, and Giles complained and swore, he knew he was making a choice, and that was freedom itself.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the end of the fic. I hope you have enjoyed. I hope it's not too rushed. I really did think I'd work on the darn thing more while posting it than I did... I even made the chapters short to spread it out and give myself time but... ah, slacking is as slacking does.


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